Mini project

A hands-on mini project to monitor real services locally using Docker. Whether you're new to DevOps or brushing up your observability skills — this one's for you!

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🧠 What We're Building

We're going to set up a complete monitoring stack on our local machine using Docker Desktop, which includes:

• Prometheus: For scraping and storing metrics

• Node Exporter: For collecting system metrics

• Grafana: For visualizing metrics beautifully

• Redis: A popular in-memory datastore to simulate an app

• Nginx & Apache (httpd): Lightweight web servers to simulate services

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🧰 Prerequisites

Before we begin, make sure you have:

• Docker Desktop installed and running

• Basic familiarity with Docker & containers

• A code editor like VS Code

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📁 Project Directory Structure

Here’s what your project folder will look like:

bashCopyEditdocker-monitoring/
├── docker-compose.yml
├── prometheus/
│   └── prometheus.yml
└── README.md

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🛠 Step-by-Step Setup

1️⃣ Create a Project Folder

mkdir docker-monitoring && cd docker-monitoring
mkdir prometheus

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2️⃣ Write the prometheus.yml File

Inside the prometheus/ folder, create prometheus.yml:

global:
  scrape_interval: 15s

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

  - job_name: 'node-exporter'
    static_configs:
      - targets: ['node-exporter:9100']

This tells Prometheus to:

• Scrape its own metrics

• Scrape metrics from the Node Exporter

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3️⃣ Write the docker-compose.yml File

In the root folder, create docker-compose.yml:

version: '3.8'

services:
  prometheus:
    image: prom/prometheus
    container_name: prometheus
    volumes:
      - ./prometheus/prometheus.yml:/etc/prometheus/prometheus.yml
    ports:
      - "9090:9090"

  grafana:
    image: grafana/grafana
    container_name: grafana
    ports:
      - "3000:3000"

  node-exporter:
    image: prom/node-exporter
    container_name: node-exporter
    ports:
      - "9100:9100"

  app1:
    image: nginx
    container_name: app1
    ports:
      - "8081:80"

  app2:
    image: httpd
    container_name: app2
    ports:
      - "8082:80"

  app3:
    image: redis
    container_name: app3
    ports:
      - "6379:6379"

This sets up all containers — monitoring tools and mock services.

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4️⃣ Launch the Stack

In your terminal, run:

docker-compose up -d

🎉 Boom! All your services are now running as containers.

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👀 Accessing the Stack

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📊 Visualize Metrics in Grafana

1. Open Grafana: http://localhost:3000

2. Default login: admin / admin

3. Add Prometheus as a data source (http://prometheus:9090)

4. Import a dashboard (use ID 1860 for Node Exporter)

5. 🎨 Enjoy live graphs of your system + containers!

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📎 Useful Links

• Official Redis Docs

• Redis CLI Cheat Sheet

• Node Exporter Grafana Dashboard ID 1860

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✅ Summary

In just a few steps, you:

• Deployed Prometheus, Grafana, Node Exporter, Redis, Nginx & Apache using Docker

• Monitored system and container metrics

• Visualized everything in Grafana