If you are looking for a real-time server monitoring tool, Netdata gives you a lot of information with an easy installation.
Every IT professional knows that data is essential to keep everything running smoothly. To that end, you need tools that can monitor usage, such as CPU, RAM, load, swap, bandwidth, disks, and more. You would think it would be a bit of a challenge to get such a tool up and running. However, if Ubuntu Server is your platform of choice, adding this powerful web-based monitor is incredibly easy.
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Netdata is packed with features to help you solve a litany of problems with one-second granularity, real-time visualization, ML-powered anomaly detection, root cause analysis, built-in data privacy, export and import of data snapshots, and more .
I’m going to walk you through the process of deploying Netdata to Ubuntu Server 22.04 and Rocky Linux. You can also deploy Netdata using Docker, but capabilities such as host OS performance and health are limited. Because of that limitation, it’s best to install Netdata directly on the host.
What you need to install Netdata on Linux
To be successful install Netdata you need a running instance of Linux. I’m going to demonstrate on both Ubuntu Server 22.04 and Rocky Linux 8. You also need a user with sudo privileges.
How to install Netdata on Ubuntu Server 22.04
Login to your Ubuntu Server 22.04 instance and install Netdata with the command:
sudo apt-get install netdata -y
Start and enable the service with the command:
sudo systemctl enable --now netdata
Open the necessary firewall port with the command:
sudo ufw allow 19999
That’s all for the installation on Ubuntu Server 22.04. I told you it was simple.
How to install Netdata on Rocky Linux 9
Login to your Rocky Linux 9 instance and install the EPEL repository with the command:
sudo dnf install epel-release -y
Install Netdata with:
sudo dnf install netdata -y
Start and enable the service with the command:
sudo systemctl enable --now netdata
Open the necessary firewall ports with the commands:
sudo firewall-cmd --permanent --add-port=19999/tcpsudo firewall-cmd --reload
How to configure Netdata
By default, Netdata is only accessible from the IP address 127.0.0.1. To make it accessible from any machine on your LAN, open the configuration file with:
sudo nano /etc/netdata/netdata.conf
In that file, look for the line:
bind socket to IP = 127.0.0.1
Change 127.0.0.1 to your hosting server’s IP address. Save the file and close it. Restart Netdata with:
sudo systemctl restart netdata
How to access the Netdata web UI
While Netdata is running, open and point to a web browser http://SERVER:19999. You are immediately on the Netdata dashboard (Image A), where you can start monitoring your system.
Image A
An excellent solution
Any administrator who needs to monitor how a server is performing should seriously consider installing Netdata. For the free price, you’d be hard-pressed to find an easy, more robust solution. The only caveat with Netdata is that it only monitors one server, so you cannot monitor more than one node. If you need to monitor multiple machines from one interface, you can always specify Netdata cloud an attempt.
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