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)

• 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

• 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

Prometheus Service

• Create service for prometheus

• 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

• 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

• 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

Prometheus

Then to see what metrics are available and usable, you can access them at

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