By Noman Mohammad
Sep 11, 2025
Image Source: Pexels
Traditional tools like top or manual log checking won’t warn you before disaster. Time-series monitoring gives you visibility over what’s going on inside your Linux system.
Image Source: Unsplash
Prometheus Node Exporter is like a fitness tracker for your server—tracking CPU, RAM, network, disk, file system etc, in real time, and exposing metrics via port 9100.
Image Source: Unsplash
Step 1: Download Node Exporter (e.g. v1.8.0) and install it on your Linux system (Ubuntu/Debian). Verify with: node_exporter --version.
Image Source: Unsplash
Step 2: Create a prometheus user, configure systemd service so Node Exporter starts at boot. Enable and start the service.
Image Source: Unsplash
Step 3: Visit: http://<server_ip>:9100/metrics to check if Node Exporter is running. If metrics show up, you’re good to go.
Image Source: Unsplash
Step 4: Tell Prometheus to scrape the Node Exporter endpoint. Edit prometheus.yml, add a job_name under scrape_configs targeting the exporter. Restart Prometheus.
Image Source: Unsplash
Best Practice: Lockdown access—use firewalls (e.g. UFW) to restrict port 9100; if exposing externally, protect via reverse proxy/basic auth.
Image Source: Unsplash
For many servers: group them using labels, list targets via DNS or static configs; helps scalability and easier visualization.
Image Source: Unsplash
Keep Node Exporter up to date, monitor its uptime, back up Prometheus data. Your monitoring tool itself must be reliable.
Image Source: Unsplash
With time-series data, you can spot trends, avoid outages before they escalate—and get control back from emergencies. Prometheus + Node Exporter helps build proactive system maintenance.
Image Source: PEXELS