Skip to content

Capstone Project 4 — Create a Monitoring Server

Monitoring is one of the most critical components of production infrastructure. A Monitoring Server continuously collects metrics, visualizes system health, generates alerts, and helps administrators detect issues before they become outages. Modern organizations rely on monitoring platforms such as Prometheus and Grafana to observe Linux servers, applications, containers, Kubernetes clusters, and cloud infrastructure. In this capstone project, you'll build a production-ready monitoring server capable of collecting metrics from multiple Linux systems and displaying them through interactive dashboards.

Project Overview

Objective

Build a centralized monitoring server using Prometheus, Grafana, and Node Exporter to monitor multiple Linux servers.

Skills Covered

  • Linux Administration
  • Prometheus
  • Grafana
  • Node Exporter
  • System Monitoring
  • Dashboard Creation
  • Alerting
  • Firewall Configuration
  • Backup
  • Logging
  • Production Hardening

Estimated Time

6–8 Hours

Difficulty

Beginner → Advanced

Project Architecture

                +----------------------+
                |   Monitoring Server  |
                |                      |
                |  Prometheus          |
                |  Grafana             |
                +----------+-----------+
                           │
         Metrics Collection │
                           │
      ┌──────────────┬──────────────┬──────────────┐
      │              │              │
+-------------+ +-------------+ +-------------+
| Linux-01    | | Linux-02    | | Linux-03    |
| NodeExporter| | NodeExporter| | NodeExporter|
+-------------+ +-------------+ +-------------+

Learning Outcomes

By completing this project, you'll be able to:

  • Deploy Prometheus
  • Install Grafana
  • Monitor Linux servers
  • Configure Node Exporter
  • Build dashboards
  • Configure alerts
  • Monitor infrastructure health
  • Validate production monitoring

Project Requirements

Hardware

Minimum

  • 2 vCPU
  • 4 GB RAM
  • 40 GB Disk

Recommended

  • 4 vCPU
  • 8 GB RAM
  • 80 GB SSD

Operating System

Choose one:

  • Ubuntu Server 24.04 LTS
  • Ubuntu Server 22.04 LTS
  • Rocky Linux 9
  • AlmaLinux 9

This project uses Ubuntu Server.

Software Stack

  • Ubuntu Server
  • Prometheus
  • Grafana
  • Node Exporter
  • OpenSSH
  • UFW
  • rsync

Project Tasks

Phase Task
1 Install Linux
2 Install Prometheus
3 Install Node Exporter
4 Configure Prometheus
5 Install Grafana
6 Build Dashboards
7 Configure Alerts
8 Configure Firewall
9 Configure Backup
10 Validate Monitoring
11 Harden Server
12 Production Review

Phase 1 — Install Linux

Update packages.

sudo apt update

sudo apt upgrade -y

Verify.

hostnamectl

Phase 2 — Install Prometheus

Create Prometheus user.

sudo useradd --no-create-home --shell /bin/false prometheus

Download Prometheus.

wget https://github.com/prometheus/prometheus/releases/latest/download/prometheus-linux-amd64.tar.gz

Extract.

tar -xvf prometheus-linux-amd64.tar.gz

Verify.

prometheus --version

Phase 3 — Install Node Exporter

Download Node Exporter.

wget https://github.com/prometheus/node_exporter/releases/latest/download/node_exporter-linux-amd64.tar.gz

Extract.

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

Start Node Exporter.

./node_exporter

Verify metrics.

curl http://localhost:9100/metrics

Phase 4 — Configure Prometheus

Edit configuration.

sudo nano /etc/prometheus/prometheus.yml

Example:

scrape_configs:
  - job_name: linux
    static_configs:
      - targets:
          - localhost:9100

Restart Prometheus.

sudo systemctl restart prometheus

Verify targets.

http://server-ip:9090/targets

Phase 5 — Install Grafana

Install dependencies.

sudo apt install grafana

Enable service.

sudo systemctl enable grafana-server

sudo systemctl start grafana-server

Verify.

systemctl status grafana-server

Open browser.

http://server-ip:3000

Default login:

admin

admin

Phase 6 — Build Dashboards

Create dashboards for:

  • CPU Usage
  • Memory Usage
  • Disk Usage
  • Filesystem
  • Load Average
  • Network Traffic
  • Running Processes
  • System Uptime

Import the Node Exporter Full dashboard or create your own custom dashboard.

Phase 7 — Configure Alerts

Create alerts for:

  • CPU > 80%
  • Memory > 80%
  • Disk > 85%
  • Server Down
  • Filesystem Full
  • High Load Average

Verify alerts trigger correctly during testing.

Phase 8 — Configure Firewall

Install UFW.

sudo apt install ufw

Allow required ports.

sudo ufw allow 22/tcp

sudo ufw allow 3000/tcp

sudo ufw allow 9090/tcp

Enable firewall.

sudo ufw enable

Verify.

sudo ufw status

Phase 9 — Configure Backup

Backup Prometheus configuration.

tar -czf prometheus-config.tar.gz /etc/prometheus

Backup Grafana configuration.

tar -czf grafana-config.tar.gz /etc/grafana

Synchronize backups.

rsync -av /etc/prometheus /backup

Phase 10 — Validate Monitoring

Verify Prometheus.

http://server-ip:9090

Verify Grafana.

http://server-ip:3000

Verify metrics.

curl localhost:9100/metrics

Confirm dashboards display live data.

Phase 11 — Harden Server

Install Fail2Ban.

sudo apt install fail2ban

Enable.

sudo systemctl enable fail2ban

sudo systemctl start fail2ban

Apply updates.

sudo apt update

sudo apt upgrade

Review listening ports.

ss -tuln

Phase 12 — Production Review

Verify:

Prometheus.

systemctl status prometheus

Grafana.

systemctl status grafana-server

Firewall.

ufw status

Disk.

df -h

Logs.

journalctl

Final Project Checklist

Item Status
Linux Installed ☐
Prometheus Installed ☐
Node Exporter Installed ☐
Prometheus Configured ☐
Grafana Installed ☐
Dashboards Created ☐
Alerts Configured ☐
Firewall Enabled ☐
Backup Configured ☐
Monitoring Verified ☐
Server Hardened ☐
Production Validation Completed ☐

Production Perspective

Monitoring servers are commonly used to monitor:

  • Linux Servers
  • Kubernetes Clusters
  • Docker Hosts
  • Databases
  • CI/CD Servers
  • Cloud Infrastructure
  • Virtual Machines
  • Enterprise Applications

Centralized monitoring enables operations teams to identify and resolve issues before they affect users.

Hands-on Lab

Task 1

Install Prometheus.

Task 2

Install Node Exporter.

Task 3

Connect Prometheus to Node Exporter.

Task 4

Install Grafana.

Task 5

Create a CPU dashboard.

Task 6

Create alerts for CPU, memory, and disk usage.

Task 7

Add two additional Linux servers to Prometheus monitoring.

Task 8

Build a production dashboard displaying:

  • CPU
  • Memory
  • Disk
  • Network
  • Uptime
  • Load Average
  • Active Alerts

Production Best Practices

  • Monitor every production server.
  • Configure meaningful alert thresholds.
  • Secure monitoring endpoints.
  • Back up monitoring configurations.
  • Monitor the monitoring server itself.
  • Review alert noise regularly.
  • Keep dashboards simple and actionable.
  • Test alert notifications periodically.
  • Protect Grafana with strong authentication.
  • Maintain historical metrics for trend analysis.

Challenge Tasks

Complete these additional tasks to extend the project:

  • Configure Alertmanager for email notifications.
  • Integrate Slack or Microsoft Teams alerts.
  • Enable HTTPS for Grafana.
  • Monitor Docker containers.
  • Monitor Kubernetes clusters.
  • Monitor MySQL or PostgreSQL.
  • Configure long-term metric storage.
  • Build custom Grafana dashboards.
  • Add Blackbox Exporter for website monitoring.
  • Configure high availability for Prometheus.

Skills Demonstrated

After completing this project, you will have demonstrated proficiency in:

  • Linux Monitoring
  • Prometheus Administration
  • Grafana Administration
  • Metrics Collection
  • Dashboard Design
  • Alert Configuration
  • Firewall Management
  • Backup Strategy
  • Production Hardening
  • Enterprise Monitoring

Congratulations!

You have successfully built a production-ready Monitoring Server.

Your monitoring platform now collects metrics from multiple Linux systems, visualizes infrastructure health, and alerts administrators about potential issues before they become outages.

This architecture closely reflects monitoring solutions used by DevOps teams, Platform Engineers, and Site Reliability Engineers in enterprise production environments.

What's Next?

Capstone Project 5 — Automate User Provisioning with Bash

You'll learn how to:

  • Create Bash automation scripts
  • Provision Linux users automatically
  • Assign groups and permissions
  • Generate secure passwords
  • Configure home directories
  • Produce audit logs
  • Automate administrative tasks

By the end of the project, you'll build a reusable Bash automation solution that provisions Linux users consistently, securely, and efficiently in production environments.