As applications shift toward microservices and containerized environments, monitoring becomes a cornerstone of DevOps and SRE practices. Tools like Prometheus and Grafana provide robust and customizable monitoring capabilities for Docker containers — enabling real-time observability, performance tracking, and alerting.

This guide walks you through integrating Docker with Prometheus and Grafana, including installation, configuration, metrics collection, and dashboard visualization.

Why Use Prometheus and Grafana for Docker Monitoring?

Prometheus is an open-source monitoring system that collects metrics via a pull model and stores time-series data. Grafana provides interactive dashboards and visualizations using Prometheus as a backend.

Benefits include:

  • Lightweight and open-source
  • Fine-grained container metrics (CPU, memory, disk I/O, network)
  • Customizable alerts
  • Real-time dashboards

Architecture Overview

[Docker Daemon] → [cAdvisor / node-exporter]
↓
[Prometheus Server]
↓
[Grafana]
  • cAdvisor: Exposes Docker container stats
  • node-exporter: Exposes host-level metrics
  • Prometheus: Scrapes and stores metrics
  • Grafana: Visualizes metrics and supports alerting

Step 1: Set Up Docker Monitoring Stack with Docker Compose

Create a docker-compose.yml file:

version: '3'

services:
prometheus:
image: prom/prometheus
volumes:
- ./prometheus.yml:/etc/prometheus/prometheus.yml
ports:
- "9090:9090"

cadvisor:
image: gcr.io/cadvisor/cadvisor:latest
ports:
- "8080:8080"
volumes:
- /:/rootfs:ro
- /var/run:/var/run:ro
- /sys:/sys:ro
- /var/lib/docker/:/var/lib/docker:ro

grafana:
image: grafana/grafana
ports:
- "3000:3000"
environment:
- GF_SECURITY_ADMIN_PASSWORD=admin
volumes:
- grafana-storage:/var/lib/grafana

volumes:
grafana-storage:

Step 2: Configure Prometheus to Scrape cAdvisor

Create prometheus.yml:

global:
scrape_interval: 15s

scrape_configs:
- job_name: 'cadvisor'
  static_configs:
  - targets: ['cadvisor:8080']
    ```

Place this file in the same directory as your Docker Compose file.

---

#### Step 3: Start the Monitoring Stack

Launch everything:

```bash
docker-compose up -d

Verify:

  • Prometheus at http://localhost:9090
  • Grafana at http://localhost:3000 (admin/admin login)

Step 4: Import Grafana Docker Monitoring Dashboard

In Grafana:

  • Add a Prometheus data source (http://prometheus:9090)
  • Import community dashboard ID 893 or search “Docker” in the Grafana dashboard marketplace

This gives a complete overview of:

  • CPU and memory usage per container
  • Network I/O
  • Block I/O
  • Container restarts and uptime

Step 5: Add Alerts and Anomaly Detection

Create Grafana alerts:

  • High CPU for > 5 mins
  • Memory usage > 90%
  • Container not running

Example rule:

WHEN avg() OF query(A, 5m, now) IS ABOVE 80
SEND TO Slack / Email / PagerDuty

Optional: Monitor Host Metrics with Node Exporter

Add to your docker-compose.yml:

node-exporter:
image: prom/node-exporter
ports:
- "9100:9100"
volumes:
- /proc:/host/proc:ro
- /sys:/host/sys:ro
- /:/rootfs:ro

Update Prometheus config:

```yml

  • job_name: ‘node’ static_configs:
    • targets: [‘node-exporter:9100’] ```

This enables host-level observability alongside container metrics.

Best Practices

  • Use labels and tags to organize metrics by service/environment
  • Set retention policies in Prometheus to manage disk usage
  • Secure endpoints using basic auth or reverse proxies
  • Backup Grafana dashboards regularly
  • Use Grafana provisioning to automate dashboard deployment

Conclusion

By integrating Docker with Prometheus and Grafana, you gain powerful, real-time insights into your containerized workloads. This stack provides full observability into performance, failures, and resource usage — critical for proactive infrastructure monitoring.

Whether you’re running a dev environment or a production-scale microservices platform, this setup forms the foundation for robust, scalable container monitoring.