Netdata, monitor the metrics of our Ubuntu in real time

In the next article we are going to take a look at Netdata. This is one tool to visualize and monitor metrics in real time. It is designed to accumulate all kinds of data, such as CPU usage, disk activity, SQL queries, visits to a website, etc. The tool is designed to visualize the "now" in as much detail as possible. It will allow the user to get an insight into what is happening and what has just happened in their system or application. It is an ideal option for solving problems in real time.

net data is a free software (a daemon) that gathers performance data in real time Linux systems, applications, and SNMP devices, and renders them in a web-based interface. Users can monitor anything with the API plugin and also easily embed the charts to any external web page. It has its own web server to display the final report in graphical format.

This is a daemon that, when run, is responsible for obtaining information in real time, per second, and presenting it on a website for visualization and analysis. As I say, the presentation is interactive and in real time. This is one lightweight tool that for the most part has been written in C.

General Netdata Features

Can run on any GNU / Linux kernel to monitor any system or application. They can be run on Linux PCs, servers or embedded devices.

This daemon has been designed to be installed on a system, without interrupting the applications that are running on it. Operates according to user-specified memory requirements using only idle CPU cycles.

By default it will contain certain plugins that collect key metrics from the system. Its behavior is extensible by using its API for plugins.

It can be run anywhere a Gnu / Linux kernel runs and your graphics can be embedded in web pages.

It has a user interface that provides us with a customizable theme. The theme is customizable through HTML language.

Among its virtues is that not a devil devour resources. It has a low consumption of RAM or CPU while it is running.

Who needs it will be able to consult more about the project or its characteristics in the web page.

Metrics that Netdata controls

Netdata collects several thousand metrics per device. All these parameters are collected and displayed in real time.

• CPU: usage, interrupts, softirq (Linux kernel's software interrupt) and frequency (total and per core)
• RAM, Swap and specific memory uses by the kernel (ex: KSM)
• Disks: I / O, operations, backlog, utilization.
• Network interfaces
• IPv4
• IPv6
• Firewal (netfilter / iptables)
• Linux anti-Ddos protection (SYNPROXY metrics)
• Processes
• Entropy
• NetworkQoS
• Applications (shows values ​​such as CPU, memory consumption, threads, etc.)
• Consumption of resources by group and users.
• Hardware sensors (temperature, voltage, energy ...)
• Squid proxy server
• NFS file servers
• postfix email server
• nginx webserver
• MySQL databases
• NUT UPS
• apache web server
• SNMP devices
• ISC Bind name server

… And these are just some of the things that can be monitored with Netdata. On your page GitHub you can see all the services you can commission along with their source code.

Install Netdata on Ubuntu

To install Netdata in our Ubuntu (I have only tested it in Ubuntu 16.04) we are going to start by installing the dependencies required by the application by executing the following command in the terminal (Ctrl + Alt + T):

sudo apt install zlib1g-dev uuid-dev libmnl-dev gcc make git autoconf autogen automake pkg-config curl jq nodejs -y

If everything has been correct, now is the time to download Netdata. From the same terminal we will have to write:

git clone https://github.com/firehol/netdata.git --depth=1

cd netdata

sudo ./netdata-installer.sh

During installation, a message will appear, just press Enter to continue the installation process.

Once the installation is finished, you will be able to see precise instructions to start Netdata on your computer. To do this, we open a browser (the one you like the most) and in the URL we write:

http://127.0.0.1:19999/

This will open the page from which we can take a look at all the data that the program is going to offer us.

Uninstall Netdata

To eliminate this program from our system, we can do it using the file to uninstall that we can find inside the directory that we downloaded previously. From the console, inside that directory we are going to write:

sudo ./netdata-uninstaller.sh

If we have started the Netdata service we will have to add –force in order to carry out the uninstallation successfully.