Unraid Data Monitoring with Prometheus and Grafana

In this installment of the "Best of the Forum" series, let's take a look at how to set up Prometheus and Grafana on your Unraid server for feature-rich metrics dashboards and data visualizations.

This guide will get you set up with the base Prometheus Node Exporter which will further allow users to create custom Dashboards and the monitoring of custom setups such as the Nvidia Driver plugin, Pihole, and local PC and VM monitoring, all self-hosted on Unraid!

A big thanks goes to ich777 for writing up these guides and for helping other users get these going!  

Guide

1. Go to Community Apps (CA) and download the Grafana Docker container. Be sure to input your server's IP or hostname in the Key1 section when first setting up the container:

2. Download the Prometheus Docker container from CA. Note: The docker will be stopped after the installation and will be fixed in the next steps:

3. Download and install the Prometheus Node Exporter plugin from CA:

4. Download the 'prometheus.yml' and place it in your '.../appdata/prometheus/etc' directory on your Unraid server:

prometheus.yml

Note: You must be logged in to the Unraid forums to download.

5. Open the prometheus.yml and edit the 'YOURUNRAIDSERVERIP' part so that it matches your server's IP and save and close the file:

6. Go to your Docker page and start the Prometheus Docker container.

7. After it is started, click the Prometheus container again and select WebUI:

8. On the top click on "Status -> Targets":

9. You should see now a list with two entries, the entry "YOURSERVERIP:9100" should display "UP" like in the following screenshot:

10. Go to the Docker page, start the Grafana WebUI and log in with your Username and Password (default: admin | admin):

11. If you left it at default you should change the password in the next screen to something secure:

12. Next we are going to configure the Prometheus data source in Grafana by clicking on the "Gear Icon -> Data sources":

13. Click on "Add data source" and at Prometheus click on "Select":

15. At the bottom click on "Save & Test" and you should see this message:

16. In Grafana click on "+ -> Import":

17. Now we are going to import a pre-configured Dashboard for the Node Exporter from Grafana.com (Source). To do this, simply enter the ID from the Dashboard and click "Load":

18. In the next screen be sure to select "Prometheus" as the data source and rename the Dashboard to your liking and click Import.

Now, you should be greeted with something like this:

Keep in mind that the Dashboard can display N/A values since there is not enough data available. Wait a few minutes and you will see that the values begin to fill in. Also, please also keep in mind that some values will not be filled at all because by default Unraid doesn't have a SWAP, for example.

Prometheus nvidia-smi Exporter

If you would like a dashboard to pair with the please see here for a setup guide.

Prometheus PiHole Exporter

If you use Pihole, set up a dashboard to track those blocked ads here!