5 Projects ideas with Grafana and Prometheus

Want to predict and prevent problems in your systems before they impact users?

Grafana and Prometheus make it possible, with end-to-end monitoring and visualizations that keep you in the driver’s seat.

Here are some end-to-end projects using Grafana and Prometheus for implementing observability in real-world scenarios:

1. Monitoring a Web Application with Grafana & Prometheus

Objective:

Set up a full monitoring stack to monitor a sample web application, including system metrics, application metrics, and custom business logic metrics.

Steps:

1. Environment Setup:
   • Deploy a sample web application (e.g., Node.js or Flask app) on Docker or Kubernetes.
   • Integrate an Nginx reverse proxy.
2. Install Prometheus:
   • Configure Prometheus to scrape metrics from:
     • Node Exporter for system metrics (CPU, RAM, Disk).
     • Application metrics using libraries like prom-client or prometheus_flask_exporter.
     • Nginx metrics using the nginx-prometheus-exporter.
3. Set Up Grafana:
   • Install Grafana and connect it to Prometheus.
   • Create dashboards for:
     • System health (CPU, Memory, Disk, Network).
     • Application performance (HTTP request rates, latencies, errors).
     • Business logic metrics (e.g., user signups, API call stats).
4. Add Alerts:
   • Define alerting rules in Prometheus for thresholds (e.g., CPU > 80%, Latency > 500ms).
   • Send notifications via email, Slack, or PagerDuty using Alertmanager.

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2. Kubernetes Cluster Monitoring

Objective:

Set up a monitoring stack for a Kubernetes cluster to monitor pods, nodes, services, and custom applications.

Steps:

1. Deploy Prometheus Operator:
   • Install Prometheus using Helm or the Prometheus Operator for Kubernetes.
   • Use Kubernetes service discovery to automatically scrape pod metrics.
2. Integrate Metrics Sources:
   • Use kube-state-metrics for Kubernetes object states.
   • Use cAdvisor for container-level metrics.
   • Deploy an application exporter for app-specific metrics.
3. Set Up Grafana:
   • Install Grafana on Kubernetes.
   • Use pre-built dashboards for Kubernetes (e.g., Kubernetes Cluster Monitoring, Pod/Node Metrics).
4. Define Alerts:
   • Set alert rules for node health (CPU, Disk pressure).
   • Monitor pod restarts, crash loops, and pending pods.
5. Visualize and Scale:
   • Visualize traffic distribution across services.
   • Monitor Horizontal Pod Autoscaling (HPA) behavior based on custom metrics.

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3. End-to-End CI/CD Pipeline Monitoring

Objective:

Monitor the health of CI/CD pipelines using Grafana and Prometheus.

Steps:

1. Setup CI/CD Pipeline:
   • Use Jenkins or GitLab CI/CD to create a pipeline.
   • Expose metrics using jenkins-exporter or gitlab-exporter.
2. Integrate Prometheus:
   • Scrape metrics for:
     • Build durations.
     • Pipeline success/failure rates.
     • Test case pass/fail ratios.
3. Create Grafana Dashboards:
   • Visualize:
     • Build trends over time.
     • Failure causes and durations.
4. Alerts:
   • Set alerts for build failures or long-running builds.

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4. E-commerce Platform Observability

Objective:

Implement observability for an e-commerce platform, tracking infrastructure, user activity, and revenue.

Steps:

1. Deploy Platform:
   • Set up an e-commerce platform like Magento or a custom-built application.
2. Prometheus Integration:
   • Use Node Exporter for server metrics.
   • Integrate with the application using custom metrics:
     • Product views, cart additions, checkout rates.
     • Revenue trends.
3. Visualize with Grafana:
   • Create dashboards for:
     • Server and application health.
     • Real-time sales tracking.
     • User behavior metrics.
4. Define Alerts:
   • Send alerts for:
     • Server downtimes.
     • Revenue dips.

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5. Cloud Infrastructure Monitoring (AWS, Azure, or GCP)

Objective:

Monitor a multi-cloud infrastructure setup.

Steps:

1. Set Up Prometheus:
   • Integrate with cloud metrics APIs using exporters like:
     • cloudwatch-exporter for AWS.
     • azure-metrics-exporter for Azure.
     • stackdriver-exporter for GCP.
2. Build Grafana Dashboards:
   • Create multi-cloud dashboards for:
     • Compute resource usage (EC2, VMs, Instances).
     • Network health (load balancers, traffic, errors).
     • Storage usage (S3, Blob storage).
3. Add Alerts:
   • Send alerts for cost anomalies or critical resource depletion.

These projects cover different domains, giving you hands-on experience with observability using Grafana and Prometheus.

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