Setting Up a Resource Monitoring Environment with Prometheus and Grafana

Overview

This is a memo on setting up a resource monitoring environment using Prometheus and Grafana.

Environment

  • Sakura VPS
  • CentOS 7 series

Installing Prometheus

Download Prometheus following the instructions on Prometheus - Getting Started.

After downloading, start Prometheus and confirm that you can access the dashboard.

If the port is not open, make sure to open it.

Installing node_exporter

Download node_exporter from Prometheus - node_exporter.

Start node_exporter as well.

Similarly, check the port.

Add the following to the static_configs section in Prometheus.yml:

Run killall prometheus and then restart Prometheus.

Installing Grafana

Download Grafana following the instructions on Grafana - Installing on RPM-based Linux (CentOS, Fedora, OpenSuse, RedHat).

Add the Yum Repository and install it.

After installation, start Grafana and confirm that you can access it.

If the port is not open, make sure to open it.

Integrating Prometheus and Grafana

Login

Once Grafana is installed, access Grafana and log in.

The default login credentials are username: admin and password: admin.

After logging in, you can change the login credentials as needed.

Setting the Data Source

Click the Windows-like icon in the left menu, then click Dashboards → Home.

To set up the Data Source, select Add data source.

Refer to Sakura Knowledge - Creating Monitoring Dashboards with Prometheus and Grafana for configuration details.

Due to the placeholder design in the HTTP settings URL, I mistakenly thought the default value was pre-configured. If you proceed without setting it, the graphs will not generate properly. Don’t forget to configure it.

Preparing a Dashboard Template

Prepare a dashboard template for Prometheus from Grafana Labs.

Use Prometheus system by Thomas Cheronneau and click Copy ID to Clipboard.

In the left menu, click the + icon → Dashboards → Import.

Paste the ID into the Grafana.com Dashboard field and click Load.

In the Options section, select prometheus (the Prometheus Data Source) for the Data source.

Impressions

This is a rough summary, but this setup should allow for monitoring. It seems you can also configure alerts, so I’d like to try that at some point.

References