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Install Second Prometheus Node Exporter

Video Lecture

Install Prometheus Node Exporter Install Second Prometheus Node Exporter

Description

I will install a Prometheus Node Exporter on a different server and connect to it using the main Prometheus service.

On the other server install it,

sudo apt install prometheus-node-exporter

Check its status.

sudo service prometheus-node-exporter status

It has created a specific user called prometheus. We can inspect it.

id prometheus
ps -u prometheus
ss -ntlp | grep prometheus

It is now exposing the metrics endpoint on http://[your domain or ip]:9100

Now to create a scrape config on the Prometheus server that retrieves metrics from this new URL.

Go back onto your main Prometheus server and edit the existing scrape config for node and add the new metrics endpoint for the other server.

sudo nano /etc/prometheus/prometheus.yml

...
scrape_configs:
...
- job_name: node
  # If prometheus-node-exporter is installed, grab stats about the local
  # machine by default.
  static_configs:
    - targets: ['localhost:9100']
    - targets: ['IP_ADDRESS_OR_DOMAIN_NAME_OF OTHER_SERVER:9100']

Firewall

If your server is on the public internet, and you haven't configured a dedicated firewall, it may be accessible via the address http://[your domain or IP]:9100/

You can restrict access to port 9100 using IPTables.

iptables -A INPUT -p tcp -s <domain name or ip of prometheus server> --dport 9100 -j ACCEPT
iptables -A INPUT -p tcp --dport 9100 -j DROP
iptables -L

Nginx Reverse Proxy

If you have Nginx running on your other server already, with a domain name and an SSL certificate setup, then you can add a location to an existing website config.

For the following instructions, presume that I have already installed Nginx, with a custom domain and installed an SSL certificate as outlined in the sections below, but customized for this other server where I've just installed the Prometheus Node Exporter.

Add the location to your websites existing Nginx configuration

sudo nano /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/YOUR-EXISTING-CONFIGURATION.conf

... 
    location /metrics {
        allow  ###.###.###.###;
        deny all;
        proxy_pass           http://localhost:9100/metrics;
    }
...

Prometheus Course

If you want to try a more detailed course on Prometheus, then you can visit my Prometheus tutorials.

IPTables Cheat Sheet

Grafana 10 and Ubuntu 22.04 Notes

There are no considerable differences to be aware of as shown and discussed in the video.

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