Explaining modern server monitoring stacks for self-hosting
1–10 of 36 posts
Re: Explaining modern server monitoring stacks for self-hosting
#2For my single self-hosted server (also NixOS), I use netdata, because it has all the info I need, is efficient enough while keeping a day’s worth of history as well, and most importantly has built-in alerts for services like telegram or slack.
Other stacks can do the same, but I haven’t found anything as simple to set up; netdata is just a simple service.
Re: Explaining modern server monitoring stacks for self-hosting
#3For my single self-hosted server (also NixOS), I use netdata, because it has all the info I need, is efficient enough while keeping a day’s worth of history as well, and most importantly has built-in alerts for services like telegram or slack. Other stacks can do the same, but I haven’t found anything as simple to set up; netdata is just a simple service.
My first exposure to netdata was part of the default FreeNAS install. It was super easy to use and effective to understand the basic server health and telemetry.
Re: Explaining modern server monitoring stacks for self-hosting
#4Prometheus and other modern application monitoring oriented timeseries solution stacks seem to be an overkill for simple server infrastructure monitoring, Zabbix is easier to setup and use and has all the batteries included.
Re: Explaining modern server monitoring stacks for self-hosting
#5Prometheus and other modern application monitoring oriented timeseries solution stacks seem to be an overkill for simple server infrastructure monitoring, Zabbix is easier to setup and use and has all the batteries included.
Agree with this take, depending on just how simple a home setup is.
If you're going to be working with it on the job, Prometheus is relatively simple to provision, though, and can provide some experience if you use it at home.
Re: Explaining modern server monitoring stacks for self-hosting
#6Push model is only great for short lived jobs (lambdas, cronjobs). Pull model scales much more easily if you’ve large number of servers in your fleet. Configuration is managed centrally, only the agent (like node-exporter) has to be running on the target node.
Re: Explaining modern server monitoring stacks for self-hosting
#7Push model is only great for short lived jobs (lambdas, cronjobs). Pull model scales much more easily if you’ve large number of servers in your fleet. Configuration is managed centrally, only the agent (like node-exporter) has to be running on the target node.
How do you deal with security? Are all nodes accepting connections from the monitoring node? With push, the monitoring node is exposed, but it is a less valuable target than every node in the network.
This is my main gripe with Prometheus (didn't use it yet).
Re: Explaining modern server monitoring stacks for self-hosting
#8Push model is only great for short lived jobs (lambdas, cronjobs). Pull model scales much more easily if you’ve large number of servers in your fleet. Configuration is managed centrally, only the agent (like node-exporter) has to be running on the target node.
How do you deal with security? Are all nodes accepting connections from the monitoring node? With push, the monitoring node is exposed, but it is a less valuable target than every node in the network. This is my main gripe with Prometheus (didn't use it yet).
Feels like some combination of VPCs and bastion edges would work
Re: Explaining modern server monitoring stacks for self-hosting
#9Prometheus and other modern application monitoring oriented timeseries solution stacks seem to be an overkill for simple server infrastructure monitoring, Zabbix is easier to setup and use and has all the batteries included.
I hadn't known about Zabbix (or netdata) and I'm currently evaluating our options for monitoring. I was going to explore in the direction of Prometheus (+ Grafana), so I'm glad to know about these other seemingly more straightforward and simple options. Thanks for mentioning it.
Re: Explaining modern server monitoring stacks for self-hosting
#10For my single self-hosted server (also NixOS), I use netdata, because it has all the info I need, is efficient enough while keeping a day’s worth of history as well, and most importantly has built-in alerts for services like telegram or slack. Other stacks can do the same, but I haven’t found anything as simple to set up; netdata is just a simple service.
Self hosting in general tends to be overkill. It’s mostly people practicing for enterprise tasks.
If you wanted to be practical about things you very likely would just give up self hosting entirely.