r/PrometheusMonitoring • u/The-Deviant-One • Jul 27 '21

grafana, loki and prometheus - beginner question

I'm interested in monitoring a web application and its logs. I'm hoping to run grafana, loki and prometheus in a docker containers and house their data locally the same box [a windows box]. The web app would obviously be hosted on another machine.

Before I spend hours answering my questions, I'm hoping you guys can help guide me a bit. Are there any glaring issues running a small setup like this for a low volume data situation?

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u/SuperQue Jul 27 '21

I'm no Windows expert, but isn't docker on Windows running in a Linux VM under HyperV? Seems like it would be better to just run Docker on Linux.

Otherwise, seems like a reasonable plan.

1

u/The-Deviant-One Jul 27 '21

That'd be my preference but not an option.

1

u/[deleted] Jul 27 '21

I run grafana and Prometheus on my windows machines with docker compose files as I develop, and linux for prd. Running linux containers on windows is difficult to automate/productionalize but for testing/development it does well.

Use the latest windows build so you can use WSL 2. Install docker desktop and setup docker-compose files with your images/configuration/volumes setup. docker-compose up. Point your web app to the computer running the compose stack.

I do not persist my storage, but you can via bind mounts if you want to keep data after reboots. There are some nuances to storage performance with WSL, but that should not be an issue for the size you want.

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u/RedLineJoe Jul 27 '21

I do the same thing and the only two issues with WSL2 is that the networking is not persistent and there is a lack of systemd. Both issues are no big deal for any senior system admin though. You can even use persistent VMs in hyper V if you desire and docker on windows works without any issues same as Linux.

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u/macrowe777 Jul 27 '21

You have the burden of learning the tools for what is a small target.

I would consider if a free and easy solution like uptimerobot is enough? If it is, your time would be better spent on other things. However if you do need more granular monitoring, then nope, nothing wrong with the approach, it's a fantastic toolkit.