How to install Prometheus on Linux (CentOS 7 & Ubuntu)

Quoted from Wikipedia – “Prometheus is a free software application used for event monitoring and alerting. It records real-time metrics in a time series database (allowing for high dimensionality) built using a HTTP pull model, with flexible queries and real-time alerting. The project is written in Go and licensed under the Apache 2 License, with source code available on GitHub, and is a graduated project of the Cloud Native Computing Foundation, along with Kubernetes and Envoy” Therefore, here I want to share information about how to install Prometheus on Linux, let’s see:

1. Install prometheus on linux ¶

1.1. Install prometheus on linux CentOS 7 ¶

Preparation & Install Prometheus

• Create user for prometheus (without home directory)

useradd --no-create-home --shell /bin/false prometheus

• Create folder for prometheus library

mkdir /etc/prometheus
mkdir /var/lib/prometheus

• Set folder ownership for prometheus user

chown prometheus:prometheus /etc/prometheus
chown prometheus:prometheus /var/lib/prometheus

• Download and ekstract prometheus

curl -LO https://github.com/prometheus/prometheus/releases/download/v2.19.2/prometheus-2.19.2.linux-amd64.tar.gz
tar xzvf prometheus-2.19.2.linux-amd64.tar.gz

/* note : adjust the version and type of your linux */

• Copy prometheus and promtool to bin directory

cp prometheus-2.19.2.linux-amd64/prometheus /usr/local/bin
cp prometheus-2.19.2.linux-amd64/promtool /usr/local/bin

• Set folder ownership for prometheus user

chown prometheus:prometheus /usr/local/bin/prometheus
chown prometheus:prometheus /usr/local/bin/promtool

• Copy console and console_libraries into prometheus directory

cp -r prometheus-2.19.2.linux-amd64/consoles /etc/prometheus
cp -r prometheus-2.19.2.linux-amd64/console_libraries /etc/prometheus

• Set console and console_libraries ownership for prometheus user

chown -R prometheus:prometheus /etc/prometheus/consoles
chown -R prometheus:prometheus /etc/prometheus/console_libraries

Prometheus Configuration

• Create prometheus configuration file with the extension .yml

vim /etc/prometheus/prometheus.yml

• Fill in prometheus.yml file, fill in the target section with the server IP address

global:
  scrape_interval: 15s
scrape_configs:
  - job_name: 'prometheus'
    scrape_interval: 5s
    static_configs:
      - targets: ['IP_ADDR:9090']

• Set ownership of prometheus.yml file for prometheus user

chown prometheus:prometheus /etc/prometheus/prometheus.yml

Prometheus Service

• Create service for prometheus

vim /etc/systemd/system/prometheus.service

• Fill in prometheus.service file with this config

[Unit]
Description=Prometheus
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

• Reload the daemon to register prometheus.service

systemctl daemon-reload

• Activate Prometheus service and check the status

systemctl enable prometheus
systemctl start prometheus
systemctl status prometheus

1.2. Install prometheus on linux Ubuntu ¶

For prometheus installation on Ubuntu, the method is same as for installing on CentOS 7, so you can follow the method described above 😀

2. Allow ports on firewall (optional) ¶

If you manage your port access with a firewall, you need to open port 9090 for prometheus access. Here are several ways to open a port for prometheus :

• allow ports on ufw firewall

sudo ufw allow 9090/tcp

• mengizinkan ports di iptables

iptables -A INPUT -p tcp --dport 9090 -j ACCEPT
iptables-save | sudo tee /etc/sysconfig/iptables
systemctl restart iptables

3. Access prometheus ¶

At this point, Prometheus should have been successfully installed. Good job! Then we can access prometheus at http://IP_ADDR:9090. It will look like this :

Prometheus

Then to see what metrics are available and usable, you can access them at http://IP_ADDR:9090/metrics. It will look like this :

Prometheus Metrics

Okay, I think you have successfully installed and accessed the prometheus. In my next article I will discuss how to install node_exporter on linux. node_exporter is one of the exporters of metrics data which we can use on prometheus. Then after that I will also make an article where I combine grafana, prometheus and node_exporter to perform real-time server monitoring. Thank you all 😀

Also Read :

• How to display a list of installed applications on Linux
• How to Stop Running Processes on Linux