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Node exporter is the best way to collect all the Linux server related metrics and statistics for monitoring. Monitor Linux Servers Using Prometheus In this guide, you will learn how to setup Prometheus node exporter on a Linux server to export all node level metrics to the Prometheus server. Before You Begin Prometheus Node Exporter needs Prometheus server to be up and running. If you would like to setup Prometheus, please see the Port 9100 opened in server firewall as Prometheus reads metrics on this port. Setup Node Exporter Binary Step 1: Download the latest node exporter package. You should check the Prometheus downloads section for the latest version and update this command to get that package. wget https://github.com/prometheus/node_exporter/releases/download/v1.3.1/node_exporter-1.3.1.linux-amd64.tar.gz Step 2: Unpack the tarball tar -xvf node_exporter-0.18.1.linux-amd64.tar.gz Step 3: Move the node export binary to /usr/local/bin sudo mv node_exporter-0.18.1.linux-amd64/node_exporter /usr/local/bin/ Create a Custom Node Exporter Service Step 1: Create a node_exporter user to run the node exporter service. sudo useradd -rs /bin/false node_exporter Step 2: Create a node_exporter service file under systemd. sudo vi /etc/systemd/system/node_exporter.service Step 3: Add the following service file content to the service file and save it. [Unit] Description=Node Exporter After=network.target [Service] User=node_exporter Group=node_exporter Type=simple ExecStart=/usr/local/bin/node_exporter [Install] WantedBy=multi-user.target Step 4: Reload the system daemon and star the node exporter service. sudo systemctl daemon-reload sudo systemctl start node_exporter Step 5: check the node exporter status to make sure it is running in the active state. sudo systemctl status node_exporter Step 6: Enable the node exporter service to the system startup. sudo systemctl enable node_exporter Now, node exporter would be exporting metrics on port 9100. You can see all the server metrics by visiting your server URL on /metrics as shown below. http://<server-IP>:9100/metrics Configure the Server as Target on Prometheus Server Now that we have the node exporter up and running on the server, we have to add this server a target on the Prometheus server configuration. Note: This configuration should be done on the Prometheus server. Step 1: Login to the Prometheus server and open the prometheus.yml file. sudo vi /etc/prometheus/prometheus.yml Step 2: Under the scrape config section add the node exporter target as shown below. Change 10.142.0.3 with your server IP where you have setup node exporter. Job name can be your server hostname or IP for identification purposes. - job_name: 'node_exporter_metrics' scrape_interval: 5s static_configs: - targets: ['10.142.0.3:9100'] Step 3: Restart the prometheus service for the configuration changes to take place. sudo systemctl restart prometheus Now, if you check the target in prometheus web UI (http://<prometheus-IP>:9090/targets) , you will be able to see the status as shown below. Also, you can use the Prometheus expression browser to query for node related metrics. Following are the few key node metrics you can use to find its statistics. node_memory_MemFree_bytes node_cpu_seconds_total node_filesystem_avail_bytes rate(node_cpu_seconds_total{mode="system"}[1m]) rate(node_network_receive_bytes_total[1m])

First, we will download the Node Exporter on all machines : check the download version available from here. wget https://github.com/prometheus/node_exporter/releases/download/v1.2.2/node_exporter-1.2.2.linux-amd64.tar.gz Extract the downloaded archive tar -xf node_exporter-1.2.2.linux-amd64.tar.gz Move the node_exporter binary to /usr/local/bin: sudo mv node_exporter-1.2.2.linux-amd64/node_exporter /usr/local/bin Remove the residual files with: rm -r node_exporter-1.2.2.linux-amd64* Next, we will create users and service files for node_exporter. For security reasons, it is always recommended to run any services/daemons in separate accounts of their own. Thus, we are going to create an user account for node_exporter. We have used the -r flag to indicate it is a system account, and set the default shell to /bin/false using -s to prevent logins. sudo useradd -rs /bin/false node_exporter Then, we will create a systemd unit file so that node_exporter can be started at boot. sudo nano /etc/systemd/system/node_exporter.service [Unit] Description=Node Exporter After=network.target [Service] User=node_exporter Group=node_exporter Type=simple ExecStart=/usr/local/bin/node_exporter [Install] WantedBy=multi-user.target Since we have created a new unit file, we must reload the systemd daemon, set the service to always run at boot and start it : sudo systemctl daemon-reload sudo systemctl enable node_exporter sudo systemctl start node_exporter sudo systemctl status node_exporter Configure UFW / Firewall Ubuntu : sudo ufw allow from 10.0.0.46 to any port 9100 sudo ufw status numbered