Installing Node Exporter from Prometheus binary releases

To expand Prometheus beyond metrics about itself only, we'll install an additional exporter called Node Exporter. Node Exporter provides detailed information about the system, including CPU, disk, and memory usage.

• Download the current stable version of Node Exporter into your home directory.

cd ~
curl -LO https://github.com/prometheus/node_exporter/releases/download/v0.15.1/node_exporter-0.15.1.linux-amd64.tar.gz

• Use the sha256sum command to generate a checksum of the downloaded file:

  sha256sum node_exporter-0.15.1.linux-amd64.tar.gz

• Unpack the downloaded archive:

  tar xvf node_exporter-0.15.1.linux-amd64.tar.gz

• This will create a directory called node_exporter-0.15.1.linux-amd64 containing a binary file named node_exporter, a license, and a notice.
• Copy the binary to the /usr/local/bin directory and set the user and group ownership to the node_exporter user that you created in Step 1 and remove the leftover files from your home directory as they are no longer needed.

sudo cp node_exporter-0.15.1.linux-amd64/node_exporter /usr/local/bin
sudo chown node_exporter:node_exporter /usr/local/bin/node_exporter

rm -rf node_exporter-0.15.1.linux-amd64.tar.gz node_exporter-0.15.1.linux-amd64

Now that you've installed Node Exporter, let's test it out by running it before creating a service file for it so that it starts on boot.

Running Node Exporter

The steps for running Node Exporter are similar to those for running Prometheus itself. Start by creating the Systemd service file for Node Exporter and copy the following content into the service file:

/etc/systemd/system/node_exporter.service

• Reload systemd to use the newly created service: :sudo systemctl daemon-reload

• Run Node Exporter using the following command: :sudo systemctl start node_exporter

• Verify that Node Exporter's running correctly: :sudo systemctl status node_exporter

• Lastly, enable Node Exporter to start on boot.

sudo systemctl enable node_exporter

See also

• Prometheus: Prometheus installation, 9090, storage, Prometheus exporters: Node exporter 9100, Blackbox exporter, Prometheus alertmanager (changelog), Prometheus versions, Prometheus Node exporter releases, promtool, amtool, tsdb, /etc/default/prometheus, /etc/prometheus/prometheus.yml, journalctl -u prometheus, /etc/default/prometheus-node-exporter, PromQL, alert:, Prometheus Operator, Thanos, VictoriaMetrics, PushGateway, Prometheus API, values.yml, Amazon Managed Service for Prometheus