Install Prometheus on RHEL / CentOS 7

In this tutorial, How to install Prometheus on RHEL / CentOS 7. Prometheus is an open-source monitoring system and time series database. It is a monitoring tool for cloud-native applications and microservices. Prometheus releases Github

Install Prometheus

Create user and group Prometheus system

sudo groupadd --system prometheus
sudo useradd -s /sbin/nologin --system -g prometheus prometheus

Create the data directory for Prometheus

sudo mkdir /var/lib/prometheus

Prometheus creates the configuration directory

sudo mkdir -p -m 775 /etc/prometheus/{rules,rules.d,files_sd}

Download and extract Prometheus

cd /tmp
export RELEASE=2.8.1
wget https://github.com/prometheus/prometheus/releases/download/v${RELEASE}/prometheus-${RELEASE}.linux-amd64.tar.gz
tar xvf prometheus-${RELEASE}.linux-amd64.tar.gz
cd prometheus-${RELEASE}.linux-amd64/

Copy Prometheus binary, consoles and console_libraries

sudo cp prometheus promtool /usr/local/bin/
sudo cp -r consoles/ console_libraries/ /etc/prometheus/

Create a Prometheus configuration file.

sudo vi /etc/prometheus/prometheus.yml

The content as below

# Global config
global: 
  scrape_interval:     15s # Set the scrape interval to every 15 seconds. Default is every 1 minute.  
  evaluation_interval: 15s # Evaluate rules every 15 seconds. The default is every 1 minute.  
  scrape_timeout: 15s  # scrape_timeout is set to the global default (10s).

# A scrape configuration containing exactly one endpoint to scrape:# Here it's Prometheus itself.
scrape_configs:
  # The job name is added as a label `job=<job_name>` to any timeseries scraped from this config.
  - job_name: 'prometheus'

    # metrics_path defaults to '/metrics'
    # scheme defaults to 'http'.

    static_configs:
    - targets: ['localhost:9090']

Create a Prometheus systemd service unit file.

sudo vi /etc/systemd/system/prometheus.service

The content Prometheus systemd service as below

[Unit]
Description=Prometheus
Documentation=https://prometheus.io/docs/introduction/overview/
Wants=network-online.target
After=network-online.target

[Service]
Type=simple
Environment="GOMAXPROCS=2"
User=prometheus
Group=prometheus
ExecReload=/bin/kill -HUP $MAINPID
ExecStart=/usr/local/bin/prometheus \
  --config.file=/etc/prometheus/prometheus.yml \
  --storage.tsdb.path=/var/lib/prometheus \
  --web.console.templates=/etc/prometheus/consoles \
  --web.console.libraries=/etc/prometheus/console_libraries \
  --web.listen-address=0.0.0.0:9090 \
  --web.external-url=

SyslogIdentifier=prometheus
Restart=always

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Note: You remember to edit the line: Environment=”GOMAXPROCS=2 with replacing 2 is the number of vcpus on the server.

Clean install

rm -rf prometheus-${RELEASE}.linux-amd64.tar.gz
rm -rf prometheus-${RELEASE}.linux-amd64/

Change directory permission.

sudo chown -R prometheus:prometheus /etc/prometheus
sudo chown -R prometheus:prometheus /var/lib/prometheus/

Reload systemd daemon and start the Prometheus service

sudo systemctl daemon-reload
sudo systemctl start prometheus

Configure firewalld

sudo firewall-cmd --permanent --add-rich-rule 'rule family="ipv4" \
source address="192.168.10.0/24" port protocol="tcp" port="9090" accept'
sudo firewall-cmd --reload

Test access Prometheus service on port 9090

$ telnet localhost 9090

Access Prometheus Web dashboard on server

You have to install Prometheus on your system! You got it. Thank you for reading the DevopsRoles page!