Setting Up Prometheus and Grafana for Server Monitoring

Architecture

• Prometheus — scrapes and stores metrics from exporters
• Node Exporter — exposes Linux system metrics
• Grafana — visualizes metrics with dashboards

Install Node Exporter

wget https://github.com/prometheus/node_exporter/releases/download/v1.7.0/node_exporter-1.7.0.linux-amd64.tar.gz
tar xzf node_exporter-*.tar.gz
sudo mv node_exporter-*/node_exporter /usr/local/bin/

# Create systemd service
sudo tee /etc/systemd/system/node_exporter.service > /dev/null <<EOF
[Unit]
Description=Node Exporter
After=network.target

[Service]
User=node_exporter
ExecStart=/usr/local/bin/node_exporter
Restart=on-failure

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target
EOF

sudo useradd -rs /bin/false node_exporter
sudo systemctl daemon-reload
sudo systemctl enable --now node_exporter

Install Prometheus

wget https://github.com/prometheus/prometheus/releases/download/v2.49.0/prometheus-2.49.0.linux-amd64.tar.gz
tar xzf prometheus-*.tar.gz
sudo mv prometheus-*/prometheus prometheus-*/promtool /usr/local/bin/
sudo mkdir -p /etc/prometheus /var/lib/prometheus

Create /etc/prometheus/prometheus.yml:

global:
  scrape_interval: 15s

scrape_configs:
  - job_name: "node"
    static_configs:
      - targets: ["localhost:9100"]

  - job_name: "prometheus"
    static_configs:
      - targets: ["localhost:9090"]

Install Grafana

sudo apt install -y apt-transport-https software-properties-common
wget -q -O - https://apt.grafana.com/gpg.key | sudo gpg --dearmor -o /usr/share/keyrings/grafana.gpg
echo "deb [signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/grafana.gpg] https://apt.grafana.com stable main" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/grafana.list
sudo apt update && sudo apt install -y grafana
sudo systemctl enable --now grafana-server

Connect Grafana to Prometheus

1. Open Grafana at http://your-ip:3000 (default: admin/admin)
2. Go to Connections → Data Sources → Add Prometheus
3. URL: http://localhost:9090
4. Click Save & Test

Import a Dashboard

1. Go to Dashboards → Import
2. Enter ID: 1860 (Node Exporter Full)
3. Select your Prometheus data source
4. Click Import