Monitoring Docker Containers with cAdvisor

By Admin · Feb 25, 2026 · Updated Apr 25, 2026 · 142 views · 1 min read

What Is cAdvisor?

cAdvisor (Container Advisor) is a tool from Google that monitors running Docker containers. It collects resource usage, performance data, and provides a web UI and API.

Run cAdvisor

docker run -d \
  --name=cadvisor \
  --restart=unless-stopped \
  -p 8080:8080 \
  -v /:/rootfs:ro \
  -v /var/run:/var/run:ro \
  -v /sys:/sys:ro \
  -v /var/lib/docker:/var/lib/docker:ro \
  gcr.io/cadvisor/cadvisor:latest

Access the Dashboard

Open http://your-ip:8080 to see:

CPU usage per container
Memory usage and limits
Network I/O
Disk I/O
Container filesystem usage

Prometheus Integration

cAdvisor exposes metrics at /metrics in Prometheus format:

# prometheus.yml
scrape_configs:
  - job_name: cadvisor
    static_configs:
      - targets: ["localhost:8080"]

Key Metrics

Metric	Description
`container_cpu_usage_seconds_total`	CPU time consumed
`container_memory_usage_bytes`	Current memory usage
`container_network_receive_bytes_total`	Network bytes received
`container_fs_usage_bytes`	Filesystem usage

Grafana Dashboard

Import the Docker monitoring dashboard (ID: 893) in Grafana for pre-built visualizations of all container metrics.