The Idiot uses Grafana and InfluxDB to monitor Proxmox

Custom and configurable data visualization? Yes, please.

Grafana is a data visualization tool that pulls in metrics from several data sources. For our purposes we’ll be using InfluxDB — a database geared towards time-based metrics.

For this instance, I’m using a template within Proxmox: debian-9.0-standard_9.3-1_amd64.tar.gz on a 64-bit platform. As long as you have a modern-ish version of Debian this guide should work just as well. We’ll be using the CLI for the majority of configurations, and assuming you’ve issued su to root. If not, prefix your commands with sudo.

Note: This guide does not cover securing this setup. Avoid using it in a production environment without adding security features.

Setup

Whenever starting a new system, always perform a quick update first:

apt-get update && apt-get upgrade -y

Install InfluxDB

apt-get install influxdb

Edit the InfluxDB config file:

nano /etc/influxdb/influxdb.conf

Uncomment and edit the [udp] section to reflect the following:

[[udp]]
  enabled = true
  bind-address = "0.0.0.0:8089"
  database = "proxmox"
  batch-size = 1000
  batch-timeout = "1s"

Note: The database can be named anything — just remember what you called it when you add the data source in Grafana later. The port can also be anything available on your network, as long as it matches your entry in Proxmox’s status.cfg.

Install Grafana

Check docs.grafana.org for the latest release. Use wget to download it (example uses 5.0.1):

wget https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/grafana-releases/release/grafana_5.0.1_amd64.deb
dpkg -i grafana_5.0.1_amd64.deb

Configure Proxmox Status Reporting

Edit the PVE status config on your Proxmox node by creating /etc/pve/status.cfg:

nano /etc/pve/status.cfg

Add the following (make sure your port matches the entry in influxdb.conf):

influxdb:
  server your-server-ip-address
  port 8089

Start Services

service influxdb start
service grafana-server start
systemctl enable influxdb
systemctl enable grafana-server

Using Grafana

Navigate to http://your-server-ip-address:3000. You should see the Grafana login screen.

The default credentials are admin / admin.

Once logged in, you’ll be prompted to configure a data source. Fill in your InfluxDB details:

Clicking Save & Test should confirm Grafana’s connection to InfluxDB.

Building Dashboards

You can now create graphs using data pulled from Proxmox. Experiment by creating a new dashboard and adding panels. Here’s an example SingleStat panel configuration for pulling CPU usage from a Proxmox host: