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Thursday, November 7, 2019

How to Install Grafana and Prometheus on CentOS 7

Install Grafana and Prometheus on CentOS 7

In this article, we are creating a powerful network monitoring tool on CentOS 7 by using Grafana dashboard and Prometheus network monitoring software.

 

Table of Contents:

 

What is Prometheus? :

Prometheus is a free and open source software application used for event monitoring and alerting. It collects and records real-time metrics in a time series database and alert the users based on custom defined thresholds. Prometheus is written in Go programming language and distributed under Apache License 2.0.

Although Prometheus is very good at collection, alerting and searching for metrics. But it does not include a native tool for creating custom dashboards. Although, we can create custom dashboards for the metrics collected by Prometheus by using another free and open source software i.e. Grafana.

Install Grafana and Prometheus on CentOS 7

What is Grafana? :

Grafana is a free and open-source, general-purpose graph and dashboard composer. It supports many third party software applications such as Prometheus, PNP, InfluxDB, Graphite, etc. Grafana runs as a web application at default port 3000/tcp.

In this article, we are installing Grafana and Prometheus on CentOS 7. And we will use Grafana Web UI to create a dashboard for Prometheus metrics.

Prometheus: Up & Running by O'Reilly Media is a recommended book for the Linux system administrators, who want to learn more about creating dashboards in Grafana for Prometheus metrics.

 Read Also: How to install Grafana on Rocky Linux 9


Environment Specification:

We are using the same CentOS 7 virtual machine on which we have installed Prometheus in our previous article.

  • CPU - 3.4 Ghz (2 cores)
  • Memory - 2 GB
  • Storage - 20 GB
  • Operating System - CentOS 7.7
  • Hostname - prometheus-01.example.com
  • IP Address - 192.168.116.213 /24

 

Installing Grafana Yum Repository in CentOS 7:

Connect with prometheus-01.example.com using ssh as root user.

Grafana is available to downloads in many formats for a variety of Linux distros. Since, we are working on a CentOS 7 based Linux server, therefore, we can install Grafana by using RPMs.

Moreover, we can also install Grafana by using it's official yum repository. Therefore, we are adding Grafana yum repository in our Linux server as follows.

# vi /etc/yum.repos.d/grafana.repo

and add following directives therein.


[grafana]
name=grafana
baseurl=https://packages.grafana.com/oss/rpm
repo_gpgcheck=1
enabled=1
gpgcheck=1
gpgkey=https://packages.grafana.com/gpg.key
sslverify=1
sslcacert=/etc/pki/tls/certs/ca-bundle.crt

Build cache for yum repositories.

# yum makecache fast

 

Installing Grafana on CentOS 7:

Now, we can install Grafana with the help of yum command.

# yum install -y grafana

Enable and start Grafana service.

# systemctl enable --now grafana-server.service
Created symlink from /etc/systemd/system/multi-user.target.wants/grafana-server.service to /usr/lib/systemd/system/grafana-server.service.

Allow Grafana default service port i.e. 3000/tcp in Linux firewall.

# firewall-cmd --permanent --add-port=3000/tcp
success
# firewall-cmd --reload
success

Open URL http://prometheus-01.example.com:3000/ in a web browser.

01-grafana-web-ui-login

The default user/password for Grafana is admin/admin.

02-grafana-change-password

Because, we are login for the first time, therefore, Grafana prompt us to change the default password of admin user.

03-grafana-home-dashboard

 

Add Prometheus Data Source in Grafana:

After successful login, we are now at the main screen of Grafana Web UI.

Click on Add Data Source.

04-grafana-add-data-source

Click on Prometheus.

05-grafana-data-source-prometheus

Add a Prometheus data source as we have added in the above screenshot.

Click on Save and Test.

06-grafana-data-source-working

 

Create Prometheus Dashboard in Grafana:

Now, to add a dashboard for Prometheus, click on Dashboards tab.

07-grafana-prometheus-dashboards

Here, you can see the available dashboards related to Prometheus data source.

Import a dashboard by clicking on the import button.

08-grafana-prometheus-dashboards-imported

To customize this dashboard, click on Dashboards > Manage button from the left sidebar.

09-grafana-dashboards-manage

Click on the Prometheus 2.0 Stats dashboard.

10-grafana-prometheus-2-stats

Customize this dashboard according to your requirements.

 

Create Alerts in Grafana:

Click on Alerting > Notification Channels from the left sidebar.

11-grafana-notification-channel

Click on Add Channel to add a notification channel.

12-grafana-add-new-notification-channel

Add a channel as per the above screenshot.

13-grafana-notification-channel

Now click on Dashboards > Manage > Prometheus 2.0 Stats.

Click on Bell icon (Alert) button on left side of the page.

14-grafana-prometheus-2-stats-alert

Click on Create Alert.

15-grafana-add-alert

After editing, click on Save button on top menu bar.

16-grafana-save-dashboard

We have successfully installed Grafana and Prometheus on CentOS 7 and created a dashboard and alert for Prometheus metrics.

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