How to Set Up Prometheus and Grafana on Ubuntu

Prometheus and Grafana together provide the most powerful open-source monitoring stack. Prometheus collects metrics, Grafana visualises them.

Step 1 — Install Prometheus

sudo useradd --no-create-home --shell /bin/false prometheus
cd /tmp
wget https://github.com/prometheus/prometheus/releases/latest/download/prometheus-*.linux-amd64.tar.gz
tar -xzf prometheus-*.tar.gz
sudo mv prometheus-*/prometheus /usr/local/bin/

Step 2 — Configure Prometheus

global:
  scrape_interval: 15s
scrape_configs:
  - job_name: 'node'
    static_configs:
      - targets: ['localhost:9100']

Step 3 — Install Node Exporter

wget https://github.com/prometheus/node_exporter/releases/latest/download/node_exporter-*.linux-amd64.tar.gz
tar -xzf node_exporter-*.tar.gz
sudo mv node_exporter-*/node_exporter /usr/local/bin/
sudo systemctl enable node_exporter --now

Step 4 — Install Grafana

sudo apt install grafana -y
sudo systemctl enable grafana-server --now
# Access: http://your-server:3000 (admin/admin)

Step 5 — Import Dashboard

Grafana → Create → Import → ID: 1860 (Node Exporter Full) → Load

Conclusion

Prometheus + Grafana is the industry standard for server monitoring. Our team deploys complete monitoring stacks with custom dashboards and alerting.