monitor-prometheus

created: 20260616 updated: 20260616 authors: alick97

On ARM64 architecture (such as your Ubuntu 26.04 device), using Docker Compose is the most lightweight and highly recommended way to deploy Grafana + Prometheus.

The official Grafana and Prometheus images fully support the ARM64 architecture out of the box, so there is no need to look for special third-party images.

Here is the complete guide for a one-click deployment:

Step 1: Install Docker & Docker Compose

If you haven't installed Docker yet, run the following commands in your terminal:

# 1. Update package list and install Docker and the Compose plugin
sudo apt update
sudo apt install -y docker.io docker-compose-v2

# 2. Start Docker and enable it to run on boot
sudo systemctl enable --now docker

# 3. Add the current user to the docker group (allows running docker without sudo; requires relog to take effect)
sudo usermod -aG docker $USER

Step 2: Create Project Directory

Create a dedicated directory to store the configuration files:

mkdir -p ~/prometheus-grafana/prometheus
cd ~/prometheus-grafana

Step 3: Write Prometheus Configuration

Create prometheus.yml under the ~/prometheus-grafana/prometheus directory:

nano prometheus/prometheus.yml

Paste the following basic configuration (allowing Prometheus to monitor itself):

global:
  scrape_interval: 15s # Default scrape interval

scrape_configs:
  - job_name: 'prometheus'
    static_configs:
      - targets: ['localhost:9090']

Step 4: Write Docker Compose Configuration

Return to the project root directory ~/prometheus-grafana and create docker-compose.yml:

nano docker-compose.yml

Paste the following configuration. (Note: The deprecated version attribute has been omitted to comply with the modern Compose specification):

services:
  prometheus:
    image: prom/prometheus:latest
    container_name: prometheus
    restart: unless-stopped
    volumes:
      - ./prometheus/prometheus.yml:/etc/prometheus/prometheus.yml
      - prometheus-data:/prometheus
    command:
      - '--config.file=/etc/prometheus/prometheus.yml'
      - '--storage.tsdb.path=/prometheus'
    ports:
      - "9090:9090"
    networks:
      - monitoring

  grafana:
    image: grafana/grafana:latest
    container_name: grafana
    restart: unless-stopped
    ports:
      - "3000:3000"
    volumes:
      - grafana-data:/var/lib/grafana
    environment:
      - GF_SECURITY_ADMIN_PASSWORD=admin # Default admin password
    networks:
      - monitoring

volumes:
  prometheus-data:
  grafana-data:

networks:
  monitoring:
    driver: bridge

Step 5: Start Containers

In the ~/prometheus-grafana directory, run the following command to start the services in the background:

docker compose up -d

Once started, you can check the status of the containers using:

docker compose ps

Step 6: Connect Prometheus in Grafana

1. Open your browser and navigate to http://<your_device_IP>:3000.
2. Log in with the default credentials: admin / admin (you will be prompted to change the password on your first login).
3. Click Connections -> Data sources in the left menu.
4. Click Add data source, and select Prometheus.
5. In the Connection -> Prometheus server URL input field, enter:

   http://prometheus:9090
   

   (Note: Since they are in the same Docker network, you can use the container name prometheus directly instead of an IP address.)
6. Scroll to the bottom of the page and click Save & test. If a green "Data source is working" message appears, the connection is successful!

💡 Advanced: How to monitor ARM host metrics?

If you want to monitor the physical metrics of this Ubuntu 26.04 machine itself (CPU, memory, disk, etc.), you can integrate node-exporter.

Simply append the following service definition under services in your docker-compose.yml:

  node-exporter:
    image: prom/node-exporter:latest
    container_name: node-exporter
    restart: unless-stopped
    volumes:
      - /proc:/host/proc:ro
      - /sys:/host/sys:ro
      - /:/rootfs:ro
    command:
      - '--path.procfs=/host/proc'
      - '--path.sysfs=/host/sys'
      - '--collector.filesystem.mount-points-exclude=^/(sys|proc|dev|host|etc)($|/)'
    ports:
      - "9100:9100"
    networks:
      - monitoring