Monitoring on Docker

A docker-compose based setup of a monitoring - fully deployed via Ansible.

Configuring - Deploying - Running

Prerequites: On your machine you need git and Ansible (I use 4.4.0 in Aug 2021). And a server on which you can install & run the setup. The server just needs to have SSH and Python installed.

Configure your setup by following these steps:

• Create an inventory file per environment. For example one called TEST.yml

• Enter the server contact details (like described here). Make sure in the inventory you set your env variable, i.e. env: TEST

• Create a corresponding variable file, i.e. vars/TEST.yml

• Fill in the required variables in TEST.yml, i.e.

  server_url: "test.myserver.com" 
  certbot_use_local_ca: 1

Then execute ansible-playbook setup.yml. Then be patient - and eventually your Monitoring will be up & running 😜

For a list of all the configuration variables, have a look in vars/all.yml or for some configuration explkanations here.

Configuration

All configuration is done via the environment variable files. To check what vareiables are available and what default values they are set to, check vars/all.yml. Make sure you do not change all.yml, but rather override them in your environment variable file, i.e. vars/TEST.yml.

Some variables and options that need explanation are described below.

TO DO & DONE

Things on my to do list:

TODO: Private access

Give the site private access, using OAuth2 Proxy and Google login. The structure of the site should be:

• monitoring.grtnr.de/ shows a top level status site that also contains links to more detailed monitoring info
• monitoring.grtnr.de/details/* contains all the detailed monitoring data

Reading

• A good and thorough explanation of how nginx and Letsencrypt interact within a docker setup: How to set up an easy and secure reverse proxy with Docker, Nginx & Letsencrypt
• May be I want to use Statping
• A complete guide: Add Google Authentication to any Website using Nginx and Oauth Proxy
• Validating OAuth 2.0 Access Tokens with NGINX and NGINX Plus
• Another alternative to OAuth2 Proxy that I don't plan to use (mainly because the guides I found use OAuth Proxy): Vouch
• Two explanations on how to use Vouch: Use nginx to Add Authentication to Any Application and Enforce Google Authentication for Any Application with nginx and Vouch Proxy
• The docker image I plan to use is from Bitnami

TODO: Backup & Restore

The setup containes a backup tool wrapped in a docker container: We use the backup container from Tim Bennet.

In order to perform a backup of an existing environment (docker-based, that is)

Further TODOs

• Create proper routes, naming, accesss logic
• Add monitoring using ELK or Grafana for my servers (ghost PROD & TEST, MONITOR) with metrics:
  • Disk space
  • Memory usage
  • CPU usage
  • Certificates validity
• Add AWS costs monitoring
• Log files
  • Count errors
  • Count warnings
• Send emails when threshold are taken

DONE

• 2021-11-22: First version works with uptime-kuma, but services are still available w/o security
• 2021-11-17: Started the project based on my ghost on Docker setup

Reading / Sources / Tech background

• Uptime Kuma: A lightweight uptime-checking system