Table of Contents

1. Challenge

   Install and Configure Node Exporter on the LimeDrop Web Server

   1. Log in to the LimeDrop web server to perform the following steps.

   2. Create a user and group that will be used to run Node Exporter:

      sudo useradd -M -r -s /bin/false node_exporter
      

   3. Download and extract the Node Exporter binary:

      wget https://github.com/prometheus/node_exporter/releases/download/v0.18.1/node_exporter-0.18.1.linux-amd64.tar.gz
      

      tar xvfz node_exporter-0.18.1.linux-amd64.tar.gz
      

   4. Copy the Node Exporter binary to the appropriate location and set ownership:

      sudo cp node_exporter-0.18.1.linux-amd64/node_exporter /usr/local/bin/
      

      sudo chown node_exporter:node_exporter /usr/local/bin/node_exporter
      

   5. Create a systemd unit file for Node Exporter:

      sudo vi /etc/systemd/system/node_exporter.service
      

   6. Define the Node Exporter service in the unit file:

      [Unit]
      Description=Prometheus Node Exporter
      Wants=network-online.target
      After=network-online.target
      
      [Service]
      User=node_exporter
      Group=node_exporter
      Type=simple
      ExecStart=/usr/local/bin/node_exporter
      
      [Install]
      WantedBy=multi-user.target
      

   7. Start and enable the service:

      sudo systemctl daemon-reload
      

      sudo systemctl start node_exporter
      

      sudo systemctl enable node_exporter
      

   8. Test that your Node Exporter is working by making a request to it from localhost. You should get some metric data on the screen in response to this request:

      curl localhost:9100/metrics
      

2. Challenge

   Configure Prometheus to Scrape Metrics from the LimeDrop Web Server

   1. Log in to the Prometheus server to perform the following steps.

   2. Edit the Prometheus config file:

      sudo vi /etc/prometheus/prometheus.yml
      

   3. Locate the scrape_configs section and add a new entry under that section:

      ...
      
        - job_name: 'LimeDrop Web Server'
          static_configs:
          - targets: ['10.0.1.102:9100']
      
      ...
      

   4. Restart Prometheus to load the new config:

      sudo systemctl restart prometheus
      

   5. Navigate to the Prometheus expression browser in your web browser using the public IP address of your Prometheus server: <PROMETHEUS_SERVER_PUBLIC_IP>:9090.

   6. Run the following query to verify you are able to get some metric data from the LimeDrop web server:

      node_filesystem_avail_bytes{job="LimeDrop Web Server"}