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Node Exporter

Node Exporter is an agent that runs on the machine that is to be monitored. It collects various system-level metrics, such as CPU usage, memory usage, disk usage, network activity, and others.

Validator Machine​

Execute the following operations on your validator machine

Download & Installation​

On both your validator and monitoring machines, download and unpack Node Exporter (check the last version here)

wget https://github.com/prometheus/node_exporter/releases/download/vX.X.X/node_exporter-X.X.X.linux-amd64.tar.gz
tar xvfz node_exporter-X.X.X.linux-amd64.tar.gz
sudo rm -f node_exporter-X.X.X.linux-amd64.tar.gz
mv node_exporter-X.X.X.linux-amd64/ node-exporter/
cd node-exporter/

Add a symbolic link to the /usr/local/bin/ directory for system-wide access to Node Exporter:

sudo ln -s /home/${USER}/node-exporter/node-exporter /usr/local/bin/

Add a system unit file​

Create the .service file with a text editor

sudo nano /etc/systemd/system/node-exporter.service

Paste the below text

node-exporter.service

/etc/systemd/system/node-exporter.service
[Unit]
Description=Node Exporter
After=network-online.target
​
[Service]
User=youruser #modify this field with your user
TimeoutStartSec=0
CPUWeight=95
IOWeight=95
ExecStart=node-exporter
Restart=always
RestartSec=2
LimitNOFILE=800000
KillSignal=SIGTERM
​
[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Reload the systemd Daemon

sudo systemctl daemon-reload

Enable autostart of Node Exporter service

sudo systemctl enable node-exporter.service

Start Node Exporter service​

sudo systemctl start node-exporter.service

Use this command to check logs in real time

sudo journalctl -u node-exporter.service -f --output cat

Once the Node Exporter is installed and running, you can verify that metrics are being exported by cURLing the /metrics endpoint:

curl http://localhost:9100/metrics

Success! Node Exporter is now exposing metrics that Prometheus can scrape, including a wide variety of system metrics further down in the output (prefixed with node_). To view those metrics (along with help and type information):

curl http://localhost:9100/metrics | grep "node_"

Open Firewall Port​

Important

After successfully installing and launching Node Exporter, the next step is to open port 9100 on your Validator's firewall. This port should be accessible exclusively from your monitoring machine. This action is essential to enable Prometheus to collect data from Node Exporter.

sudo ufw allow from monitor_ip to validator_ip port 9100

Monitoring Machine​

On your monitoring machine, go to your prometheus directory and open your prometheus.yml file

sudo nano prometheus.yml

Add the cosmos node exporter job into it, under scrape_configs block

 # Validator Host Hardware Metrics
  - job_name: "validator-hardware-metrics"
​
    # validator ip and port
    static_configs:
      - targets: ["validator_ip:9100"]

Node Exporter on Monitoring machine​

While not mandatory, you may want to install a Node Exporter on your monitoring machine as well. This allows you to keep a close eye on its performance. In the event of any issues, you'll receive timely alerts, enabling you to take prompt and appropriate action.

If you opt for this step, remember to update your prometheus.yml file once again and add the monitoring node job into it, under scrape_configs block

# Monitoring Node with prometheus installed
  - job_name: "monitor-hardware-metrics"
​
    # current machine ip and port
    static_configs:
      - targets: ["localhost:9100"]