Guides - Deploying Prometheus and Grafana through the Linode Marketplace

This Marketplace App installs both Prometheus and Grafana, two open source tools that are commonly used together to collect and view data.

Use Prometheus to collect metrics and receive alerts. Prometheus monitors targets that you define at given intervals by scraping their metrics HTTP endpoints. This tool is particularly well-suited for numeric time series data, which makes it ideal for machine-centric monitoring as well as monitoring of highly dynamic service-oriented architectures.

Grafana is an analytics and monitoring solution with a focus on accessibility for metric visualization. You can use Grafana to create, monitor, store, and share metrics with your team to keep tabs on your infrastructure. Grafana is very lightweight and does not use a lot of memory and CPU resources.

The Linode Marketplace allows you to easily deploy software on a Compute Instance using the Cloud Manager. See Get Started with Marketplace Apps for complete steps.

1. Log in to the Cloud Manager and select the Marketplace link from the left navigation menu. This displays the Linode Create page with the Marketplace tab pre-selected.

2. Under the Select App section, select the app you would like to deploy.

3. Complete the form by following the steps and advice within the Creating a Compute Instance guide. Depending on the Marketplace App you selected, there may be additional configuration options available. See the Configuration Options section below for compatible distributions, recommended plans, and any additional configuration options available for this Marketplace App.

4. Click the Create Linode button. Once the Compute Instance has been provisioned and has fully powered on, wait for the software installation to complete. If the instance is powered off or restarted before this time, the software installation will likely fail.

To verify that the app has been fully installed, see Get Started with Marketplace Apps > Verify Installation. Once installed, follow the instructions within the Getting Started After Deployment section to access the application and start using it.

Note

Estimated deployment time: Prometheus and Grafana should be fully installed within 2-5 minutes after the Compute Instance has finished provisioning.

• Supported distributions: Ubuntu 20.04 LTS
• Recommended plan: All plan types and sizes can be used.

• Email address (required): Enter the email address to use for generating the SSL certificates.

You can optionally fill out the following fields to automatically create a limited user for your new Compute Instance. This is recommended for most deployments as an additional security measure. This account will be assigned to the sudo group, which provides elevated permission when running commands with the sudo prefix.

• Limited sudo user: Enter your preferred username for the limited user.
• Password for the limited user: Enter a strong password for the new user.
• SSH public key for the limited user: If you wish to login as the limited user through public key authentication (without entering a password), enter your public key here. See Creating an SSH Key Pair and Configuring Public Key Authentication on a Server for instructions on generating a key pair.
• Disable root access over SSH: To block the root user from logging in over SSH, select Yes (recommended). You can still switch to the root user once logged in and you can also log in as root through Lish.

If you wish to automatically configure a custom domain, you first need to configure your domain to use Linode’s name servers. This is typically accomplished directly through your registrar. See Use Linode’s Name Servers with Your Domain. Once that is finished, you can fill out the following fields for the Marketplace App:

• Linode API Token: If you wish to use the Linode’s DNS Manager to manage DNS records for your custom domain, create a Linode API Personal Access Token on your account with Read/Write access to Domains. If this is provided along with the subdomain and domain fields (outlined below), the installation attempts to create DNS records via the Linode API. See Get an API Access Token. If you do not provide this field, you need to manually configure your DNS records through your DNS provider and point them to the IP address of the new instance.
• Subdomain: The subdomain you wish to use, such as www for www.example.com.
• Domain: The domain name you wish to use, such as example.com.

To access the front end interfaces for either Grafana or Prometheus, first obtain the credentials. Then, open your web browser and navigate to the Location URL of the app you wish to access. In the login prompt that appears, enter the username and password as shown in the credentials.txt file.

Once the app has been fully deployed, you need to obtain the credentials from the server.

1. Log in to your new Compute Instance using one of the methods below:

   • Lish Console: Within the Cloud Manager, navigate to Linodes from the left menu, select the Compute Instance you just deployed, and click the Launch LISH Console button. Log in as the root user. See Using the Lish Console.
   • SSH: Log in to your Compute Instance over SSH using the root user. See Connecting to a Remote Server Over SSH for assistance.

2. Once logged in, run the following command:

   cat /root/credentials.txt
   

3. This displays the credentials and endpoint URL for both Prometheus and Grafana, as shown in the example output below.

   #################
   #   Prometheus  #
   #################
   Location: https://192-0-2-1.ip.linodeusercontent.com/prometheus
   Username: prometheus
   Password: htyjuykuyhjyrkit648648#$#%^GDGHDHTTNJMYJTJ__gr9jpoijrpo
   ##############
   #  Grafana   #
   ##############
   Location: https://192-0-2-1.ip.linodeusercontent.com
   Username: admin
   Password: ewtghwethetrh554y35636#$_0noiuhr09h)

1. Log in to the Grafana frontend. See Access Grafana and Prometheus.

2. On the main menu, hover over the gear icon to open the Configuration menu. Then click Data Sources.

3. Within the Data sources page that appears, click the Add data source button.

4. Select Prometheus from the Time series database section of the Add data source page.

5. A data source labeled Prometheus is automatically created and its configuration settings are now visible. Within the URL field, enter http://localhost:9090/prometheus. The rest of the settings can be adjusted as needed.

Now that the Prometheus Data Source is set, you can browse the available Grafana dashboards to see which dashboard fits your needs. Review the official Prometheus and Grafana documentation to learn how to further utilize your instance.

Note

Currently, Linode does not manage software and systems updates for Marketplace Apps. It is up to the user to perform routine maintenance on software deployed in this fashion.

More Information

You may wish to consult the following resources for additional information on this topic. While these are provided in the hope that they will be useful, please note that we cannot vouch for the accuracy or timeliness of externally hosted materials.

• Prometheus
• Grafana