Название: Raspberry Pi Computing: Monitoring with Prometheus and Grafana: Measure, record, visualize and understand your systems (2024 Update)
Автор: Malcolm Maclean
Издательство: Leanpub
Год: 2024-01-07
Страниц: 184
Язык: английский
Формат: pdf (true), epub
Размер: 14.6 MB

Raspberry Pi Computing: Monitoring with Prometheus and Grafana aims to provide a description of the process of setting up a Raspberry Pi computer to measure, record and present metrics using a combination of Prometheus and Grafana.

The Raspberry Pi as a concept has provided an extensible and practical framework for introducing people to the wonders of computing in the real world. At the same time there has been a boom of information available for people to use them. The following is a far from exhaustive list of sources, but from my own experience it represents a useful subset of knowledge.

The Raspberry Pi OS Linux distribution is based on Debian Linux. This is the official operating system for the Raspberry Pi.

Prometheus is an open source application used for monitoring and alerting. It records real-time metrics in a time series database built using a HTTP pull model. It is licensed under the Apache 2 License, with source code available on GitHub. It was was created because of the need to monitor multiple microservices that might be running in a system. It employs a modular architecture and employs modules called exporters, which allow the capture of metrics from a range of platforms, IT hardware and software. Prometheus is written with easily distributed binaries which allow it to run standalone with no external dependencies. Prometheus’s ‘pull model’ of metrics gathering means that it will actively request information for recording. The alternative (and both have strengths) is a ‘push model’ which occurs when information is pushed to a recording service without being asked. InfluxDB is a popular piece of software that employs that model.

Grafana is an open-source, general purpose dashboard and visualisation tool, which runs as a web application. It supports a range of data inputs such as InfluxDB or Prometheus. It allows you to visualize and alert on your metrics as well as allowing for the creation of dynamic & reusable dashboards. Grafana is open source and covered by the Apache 2.0 license and its source code is available on GitHub.

A dashboard is at the heart and soul of a monitoring system. There are plenty of other seriously important aspects, but as human beings, we have a considerable talent for considering a great deal of information quickly from an image. The key with doing that effectively is to present the information in a way that is logical and provides clarity to the data.

One of Grafana’s significant strengths is its ability to be able to present data in a flexible way. The support for adding different ways of illustrating metrics and for customising the look and feel of those visualisations is one of the defining advantages to using Grafana and a reason for its popularity.