--- title: Monitor instances description: Export metrics, collect them, visualize them. date: 2024-05-17 07:00:00+0000 image: chris-yang-1tnS_BVy9Jk-unsplash.jpg categories: - Nix - Guide - Sysadmin - Monitoring tags: - Nix - Nginx - Prometheus - Exporters - Monitoring - Docker compose draft: false --- # Monitoring Monitoring your instances allow you to keep track of servers load and its health overtime. Even looking at the stats once a day can make a huge difference as it allows you to prevent catastrophic disasters before they even happen. I have been monitoring my servers with this method for years and I had many cases I was grateful for setting it all up. In this small article I have included two guides to set these services up. First is with [NixOs](#nixos) and I also explain with [docker-compose](#docker-compose) but it's very sore as the main focus of this article is NixOS. ![Made with Excalidraw](graph1.png) **Prometheus** Prometheus is an open-source monitoring system. It helps to track, collect, and analyze metrics from various applications and infrastructure components. It collects metrics from other software called _exporters_ that server a HTTP endpoint that return data in the prometheus data format. Here is an example from `node-exporter` ```nix # curl http://localhost:9100 # HELP node_cpu_seconds_total Seconds the CPUs spent in each mode. # TYPE node_cpu_seconds_total counter node_cpu_seconds_total{cpu="0",mode="idle"} 2.54196405e+06 node_cpu_seconds_total{cpu="0",mode="iowait"} 4213.44 node_cpu_seconds_total{cpu="0",mode="irq"} 0 node_cpu_seconds_total{cpu="0",mode="nice"} 0.06 node_cpu_seconds_total{cpu="0",mode="softirq"} 743.4 ... ``` **Grafana** Grafana is an open-source data visualization and monitoring platform. It has hundreds of features embedded that can help you query from data sources like Prometheus, InfluxDB, MySQL and so on... For todays guide I will show you how to setup a few exporters (node-exporter, smartctl) and collect their metrics with prometheus. Then visualize that data via graphana. ## NixOs Nix makes it trivial to set up these services, as there are already predefined options for it in nixpkgs. I will give you example configuration files below that you can just copy and paste. I have a guide on [remote deployment](/p/remote-deployments-on-nixos/) for NixOs, below you can see an example on a folder structure you can use to deploy the services. {{< filetree/container >}} {{< filetree/folder name="server1" state="closed" >}} {{< filetree/folder name="services" state="closed" >}} {{< filetree/file name="some-service.nix" >}} {{< filetree/folder name="monitoring" state="closed" >}} {{< filetree/file name="prometheus.nix" >}} {{< filetree/file name="grafana.nix" >}} {{< filetree/folder name="exporters" state="closed" >}} {{< filetree/file name="node.nix" >}} {{< filetree/file name="smartctl.nix" >}} {{< /filetree/folder >}} {{< /filetree/folder >}} {{< /filetree/folder >}} {{< filetree/file name="configuration.nix" >}} {{< filetree/file name="flake.nix" >}} {{< filetree/file name="flake.lock" >}} {{< /filetree/folder >}} {{< /filetree/container >}} ### Exporters First is node-exporter. It exports all kind of system metrics ranging from cpu usage, load average and even systemd service count. #### Node-exporter ```nix # /services/monitoring/exporters/node.nix { pkgs, ... }: { services.prometheus.exporters.node = { enable = true; #port = 9001; #default is 9100 enabledCollectors = [ "systemd" ]; }; } ``` #### Smartctl Smartctl is a tool included in the smartmontools package. This is a collection of monitoring tools for hard-drives, SSDs and filesystems. This exporter enables you to check up on the health of your drive(s). And it will also give you a wall notification if one of your drives has a bad sector(s), which mainly suggests it's dying off. ```nix # /services/monitoring/exporters/smartctl.nix { pkgs, ... }: { # exporter services.prometheus.exporters.smartctl = { enable = true; devices = [ "/dev/sda" ]; }; # for wall notifications services.smartd = { enable = true; notifications.wall.enable = true; devices = [ { device = "/dev/sda"; } ]; }; } ``` If you happen to have other drives you can just use `lsblk` to check their paths ```bash nix-shell -p util-linux --command lsblk ``` For example here is my pc's drives ``` NAME MAJ:MIN RM SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINTS sda 8:0 1 0B 0 disk nvme1n1 259:0 0 476,9G 0 disk ├─nvme1n1p1 259:1 0 512M 0 part /boot ├─nvme1n1p2 259:2 0 467,6G 0 part │ └─luks-bbb8e429-bee1-4b5e-8ce8-c54f5f4f29a2 │ 254:0 0 467,6G 0 crypt /nix/store │ / └─nvme1n1p3 259:3 0 8,8G 0 part └─luks-f7e86dde-55a5-4306-a7c2-cf2d93c9ee0b 254:1 0 8,8G 0 crypt [SWAP] nvme0n1 259:4 0 931,5G 0 disk /mnt/data ``` ### Prometheus Now that we have setup these two exporters we need to somehow collect their metrics. Here is a config file for prometheus, with the scrape configs already written down. ```nix # /services/monitoring/prometheus.nix {pkgs, config, ... }:{ services.prometheus = { enable = true; scrapeConfigs = [ { job_name = "node"; scrape_interval = "5s"; static_configs = [ { targets = [ "localhost:${toString config.services.prometheus.exporters.node.port}" ]; labels = { alias = "node.server1.local"; }; } ]; } { job_name = "smartctl"; scrape_interval = "5s"; static_configs = [ { targets = [ "localhost:${toString config.services.prometheus.exporters.smartctl.port}" ]; labels = { alias = "smartctl.server1.local"; }; } ]; } ]; }; } ``` I recommend setting the 5s delay to a bigger number as you can imagine it can generate a lot of data. ~16kB average per scrape (node-exporter). 1 day has 86400 seconds, divide that by 5 thats 17280 scrapes a day. 17280 \* 16 = 276480 kB. Thats 270 megabytes a day. And if you have multiple servers that causes X times as much. 30 days of scarping is about 8 gigabytes (1x). **But remember, by default prometheus stores data for 30 days!** ### Grafana Now let's get onto gettin' a sexy dashboard like this. First we gotta setup grafana. ![Node exporter full (id 1860)](20240518_1958.png) ```nix # /services/monitoring/grafana.nix { pkgs, config, ... }: let grafanaPort = 3000; in { services.grafana = { enable = true; settings.server = { http_port = grafanaPort; http_addr = "0.0.0.0"; }; provision = { enable = true; datasources.settings.datasources = [ { name = "prometheus"; type = "prometheus"; url = "http://127.0.0.1:${toString config.services.prometheus.port}"; isDefault = true; } ]; }; }; networking.firewall = { allowedTCPPorts = [ grafanaPort ]; allowedUDPPorts = [ grafanaPort ]; }; } ``` If you want to access it via the internet, change the following: - `http_addr = "127.0.0.1"` - remove the firewall allowed ports This insures data will only flow via the nginx reverse proxy Remember to set `networking.domain = "example.com"` to your domain. ```nix # /services/nginx.nix { pkgs, config, ... }: let url = "http://127.0.0.1:${toString config.services.grafana.settings.server.http_port}"; in { services.nginx = { enable = true; virtualHosts = { "grafana.${config.networking.domain}" = { # Auto cert by let's encrypt forceSSL = true; enableACME = true; locations."/" = { proxyPass = url; extraConfig = "proxy_set_header Host $host;"; }; locations."/api" = { extraConfig = '' proxy_http_version 1.1; proxy_set_header Upgrade $http_upgrade; proxy_set_header Connection $connection_upgrade; proxy_set_header Host $host; ''; proxyPass = url; }; }; }; }; # enable 80 and 443 ports for nginx networking.firewall = { enable = true; allowedTCPPorts = [ 443 80 ]; allowedUDPPorts = [ 443 80 ]; }; } ``` ### Log in The default user is `admin` and password is `admin`. Grafana will ask you to change it upon logging-in! ### Add the dashboards For node-exporter you can go to dashboards --> new --> import --> paste in `1860` Now you can see all the metrics of all your server(s). Smartctl ## Docker-compose {{< filetree/container >}} {{< filetree/folder name="monitoring-project" state="closed" >}} {{< filetree/file name="docker-compose.yml" >}} {{< filetree/file name="prometheus.nix" >}} {{< /filetree/folder >}} {{< /filetree/container >}} ### Compose project I did not include a reverse proxy, neither smartctl as I forgot how to actually do it, that's how long I've been using nix :/ ```yaml # docker-compose.yml version: "3.8" networks: monitoring: driver: bridge volumes: prometheus_data: {} services: node-exporter: image: prom/node-exporter:latest container_name: node-exporter restart: unless-stopped hostname: node-exporter volumes: - /proc:/host/proc:ro - /sys:/host/sys:ro - /:/rootfs:ro command: - "--path.procfs=/host/proc" - "--path.rootfs=/rootfs" - "--path.sysfs=/host/sys" - "--collector.filesystem.mount-points-exclude=^/(sys|proc|dev|host|etc)($$|/)" networks: - monitoring prometheus: image: prom/prometheus:latest container_name: prometheus restart: unless-stopped hostname: prometheus volumes: - ./prometheus.yml:/etc/prometheus/prometheus.yml - prometheus_data:/prometheus command: - "--config.file=/etc/prometheus/prometheus.yml" - "--storage.tsdb.path=/prometheus" - "--web.console.libraries=/etc/prometheus/console_libraries" - "--web.console.templates=/etc/prometheus/consoles" - "--web.enable-lifecycle" networks: - monitoring grafana: image: grafana/grafana:latest container_name: grafana networks: - monitoring restart: unless-stopped ports: - '3000:3000' ``` ```yaml # ./prometheus.yml global: scrape_interval: 5s scrape_configs: - job_name: "node" static_configs: - targets: ["node-exporter:9100"] ``` ```bash docker compose up -d ``` ### Setup prometheus as data source inside grafana Head to Connections --> Data sources --> Add new data source --> Prometheus Type in http://prometheus:9090 as the URL, on the bottom click `Save & test`. Now you can add the dashboards, [explained in this section](#add-the-dashboards) Photo by Chris Yang on Unsplash