Module 15 - Prometheus & Grafana

Lab 1: Install node_exporter and Collect System Metrics

• How do you install node_exporter on a Linux server?

• How do you run node_exporter on port 9100?

• How do you add the node_exporter target to prometheus.yml?

• How do you restart Prometheus and query the collected metrics?

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Lab 2: Import a Pre-Built Grafana Dashboard

• How do you access Grafana dashboards on grafana.com?

• How do you import the Node Exporter Full dashboard (ID: 1860)?

• How do you observe CPU, memory, disk, and network monitoring panels?

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Lab 3: Install Alertmanager

• How do you install Alertmanager?

• How do you configure an email or Slack receiver?

• How do you connect Alertmanager to Prometheus?

• How do you test sending a dummy alert?

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Lab 4: Create Custom Prometheus Alerts

• How do you create an alerting rule file named alerts.yml?

• How do you reference the alerts file inside prometheus.yml?

• How do you restart Prometheus to load the new rules?

• How do you view active/inactive alerts in the Prometheus UI?

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Lab 5: Create a Full Monitoring Stack Using Docker Compose

• How do you create a docker-compose.yml containing:

  • Prometheus

  • Node Exporter

  • Grafana

  • Alertmanager

• How do you start all services using Docker Compose?

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Lab 6: Monitor an Nginx Server

• How do you install Nginx?

• How do you install the nginx-prometheus-exporter?

• How do you add the exporter to Prometheus targets?

• How do you create Grafana visualizations for:

  • Requests per second

  • 4xx/5xx errors

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Lab 7: Monitor a Multi-Node Environment

• How do you create two Linux VMs for monitoring?

• How do you install node_exporter on each VM?

• How do you add both servers as Prometheus targets?

• How do you create a dashboard row in Grafana for each node?

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Lab 8: Create Custom Grafana Alerts

• How do you create a Grafana alert for high CPU usage using Prometheus as the data source?

• How do you configure an email alert channel in Grafana?

• How do you intentionally trigger the alert to test notifications?

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Lab 9: Explore PromQL Queries

• How do you run PromQL queries for:

  • CPU usage trend

  • Memory usage

  • Disk I/O

  • Network throughput

• How do you interpret results in Prometheus or Grafana?

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Lab 10: Backup and Restore Grafana Dashboards

• How do you export a Grafana dashboard as JSON?

• How do you delete a dashboard?

• How do you import the JSON file to restore the dashboard?