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Labs

Building a Prometheus Server

Prometheus is a powerful tool for monitoring your infrastructure. Getting started with Prometheus is as easy as setting up a single Prometheus server. There are multiple ways to install Prometheus. In this lab, you will have the opportunity to set up a Prometheus server by installing Prometheus from pre-compiled binaries made available by the Prometheus team.

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Labs

Path Info

Level
Clock icon Intermediate
Duration
Clock icon 45m
Published
Clock icon Jun 12, 2020

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Table of Contents

  1. Challenge

    Download and Install Prometheus

    1. Create the prometheus user and directories:

      sudo useradd -M -r -s /bin/false prometheus
      
      sudo mkdir /etc/prometheus /var/lib/prometheus
      
    2. Download and extract the pre-compiled binaries:

      wget https://github.com/prometheus/prometheus/releases/download/v2.16.0/prometheus-2.16.0.linux-amd64.tar.gz
      
      tar xzf prometheus-2.16.0.linux-amd64.tar.gz prometheus-2.16.0.linux-amd64/
      
    3. Move the files from the downloaded archive to the appropriate locations, and set ownership on these files and directories to the prometheus user:

      sudo cp prometheus-2.16.0.linux-amd64/{prometheus,promtool} /usr/local/bin/
      
      sudo chown prometheus:prometheus /usr/local/bin/{prometheus,promtool}
      
      sudo cp -r prometheus-2.16.0.linux-amd64/{consoles,console_libraries} /etc/prometheus/
      
      sudo cp prometheus-2.16.0.linux-amd64/prometheus.yml /etc/prometheus/prometheus.yml
      
      sudo chown -R prometheus:prometheus /etc/prometheus
      
      sudo chown prometheus:prometheus /var/lib/prometheus
      
    4. Run Prometheus in the foreground to make sure everything is set up correctly so far:

      prometheus --config.file=/etc/prometheus/prometheus.yml
      
  2. Challenge

    Configure Prometheus as a `systemd` Service

    1. Create a systemd unit file for Prometheus:

      sudo vi /etc/systemd/system/prometheus.service
      
    2. Define the Prometheus service in the unit file:

      [Unit]
      Description=Prometheus Time Series Collection and Processing Server
      Wants=network-online.target
      After=network-online.target
      
      [Service]
      User=prometheus
      Group=prometheus
      Type=simple
      ExecStart=/usr/local/bin/prometheus 
          --config.file /etc/prometheus/prometheus.yml 
          --storage.tsdb.path /var/lib/prometheus/ 
          --web.console.templates=/etc/prometheus/consoles 
          --web.console.libraries=/etc/prometheus/console_libraries
      
      [Install]
      WantedBy=multi-user.target
      
    3. Start and enable the Prometheus service:

      sudo systemctl daemon-reload
      
      sudo systemctl start prometheus
      
      sudo systemctl enable prometheus
      
    4. Verify the Prometheus service is healthy:

      sudo systemctl status prometheus
      
    5. Make an HTTP request to Prometheus to verify it is able to respond:

      curl localhost:9090
      
    6. You can also access Prometheus in a browser using the server's public IP address: http://<PROMETHEUS_SERVER_PUBLIC_IP>:9090.

The Cloud Content team comprises subject matter experts hyper focused on services offered by the leading cloud vendors (AWS, GCP, and Azure), as well as cloud-related technologies such as Linux and DevOps. The team is thrilled to share their knowledge to help you build modern tech solutions from the ground up, secure and optimize your environments, and so much more!

What's a lab?

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