Netdata is distributed, real-time, performance and health monitoring for systems and applications. It is a highly optimized monitoring agent you install on all your systems and containers.
Netdata provides unparalleled insights, in real-time, of everything happening on the systems it runs (including web servers, databases, applications), using highly interactive web dashboards. It can run autonomously, without any third party components, or it can be integrated to existing monitoring tool chains (Prometheus, Graphite, OpenTSDB, Kafka, Grafana, etc).
Netdata is fast and efficient, designed to permanently run on all systems (physical & virtual servers, containers, IoT devices), without disrupting their core function.
Netdata is free, open-source software and it currently runs on Linux, FreeBSD, and MacOS.
The following animated image, shows the top part of a typical Netdata dashboard.
A typical Netdata dashboard, in 1:1 timing. Charts can be panned by dragging them, zoomed in/out with SHIFT
+ mouse wheel
, an area can be selected for zoom-in with SHIFT
+ mouse selection
. Netdata is highly interactive and real-time, optimized to get the work done!
We have a few online demos to experience it live: https://www.netdata.cloud
Netdata is used by hundreds of thousands of users all over the world. Check our GitHub watchers list. You will find people working for Amazon, Atos, Baidu, Cisco Systems, Citrix, Deutsche Telekom, DigitalOcean, Elastic, EPAM Systems, Ericsson, Google, Groupon, Hortonworks, HP, Huawei, IBM, Microsoft, NewRelic, Nvidia, Red Hat, SAP, Selectel, TicketMaster, Vimeo, and many more!
We provide docker images for the most common architectures. These are statistics reported by docker hub:
When you install multiple Netdata, they are integrated into one distributed application, via a Netdata registry. This is a web browser feature and it allows us to count the number of unique users and unique Netdata servers installed. The following information comes from the global public Netdata registry we run:
Netdata has a quite different approach to monitoring.
Netdata is a monitoring agent you install on all your systems. It is:
All the above, are packaged together in a very flexible, extremely modular, distributed application.
This is how Netdata compares to other monitoring solutions:
Netdata | others (open-source and commercial) |
---|---|
High resolution metrics (1s granularity) | Low resolution metrics (10s granularity at best) |
Monitors everything, thousands of metrics per node | Monitor just a few metrics |
UI is super fast, optimized for anomaly detection | UI is good for just an abstract view |
Meaningful presentation, to help you understand the metrics | You have to know the metrics before you start |
Install and get results immediately | Long preparation is required to get any useful results |
Use it for troubleshooting performance problems | Use them to get statistics of past performance |
Kills the console for tracing performance issues | The console is always required for troubleshooting |
Requires zero dedicated resources | Require large dedicated resources |
Netdata is open-source, free, super fast, very easy, completely open, extremely efficient, flexible and integrate-able.
It has been designed by SysAdmins, DevOps and Developers for troubleshooting performance problems, not just visualize metrics.
Netdata is a highly efficient, highly modular, metrics management engine. Its lockless design makes it ideal for concurrent operations on the metrics.
This is how it works:
Function | Description | Documentation |
---|---|---|
Collect | Multiple independent data collection workers are collecting metrics from their sources using the optimal protocol for each application and push the metrics to the database. Each data collection worker has lockless write access to the metrics it collects. | collectors |
Store | Metrics are stored in RAM in a round robin database (ring buffer), using a custom made floating point number for minimal footprint. | database |
Check | A lockless independent watchdog is evaluating health checks on the collected metrics, triggers alarms, maintains a health transaction log and dispatches alarm notifications. | health |
Stream | An lockless independent worker is streaming metrics, in full detail and in real-time, to remote Netdata servers, as soon as they are collected. | streaming |
Archive | A lockless independent worker is down-sampling the metrics and pushes them to backend time-series databases. | backends |
Query | Multiple independent workers are attached to the internal web server, servicing API requests, including data queries. | web/api |
The result is a highly efficient, low latency system, supporting multiple readers and one writer on each metric.
This is a high level overview of Netdata feature set and architecture. Click it to interact with it (it has direct links to documentation).
This is what you should expect from Netdata:
error
and access
logs).slate
(dark) and white
.To improve clarity on charts, Netdata dashboards present positive values for metrics representing read
, input
, inbound
, received
and negative values for metrics representing write
, output
, outbound
, sent
.
Netdata charts showing the bandwidth and packets of a network interface. received
is positive and sent
is negative.
Netdata charts automatically zoom vertically, to visualize the variation of each metric within the visible time-frame.
A zero based stacked
chart, automatically switches to an auto-scaled area
chart when a single dimension is selected.
Charts on Netdata dashboards are synchronized to each other. There is no master chart. Any chart can be panned or zoomed at any time, and all other charts will follow.
Charts are panned by dragging them with the mouse. Charts can be zoomed in/out withSHIFT
+ mouse wheel
while the mouse pointer is over a chart.
The visible time-frame (pan and zoom) is propagated from Netdata server to Netdata server, when navigating via the node menu.
To improve visual anomaly detection across charts, the user can highlight a time-frame (by pressing ALT
+ mouse selection
) on all charts.
A highlighted time-frame can be given by pressing ALT
+ mouse selection
on any chart. Netdata will highlight the same range on all charts.
Highlighted ranges are propagated from Netdata server to Netdata server, when navigating via the node menu.
Netdata can collect metrics from 200+ popular services and applications, on top of dozens of system-related metrics jocs, such as CPU, memory, disks, filesystems, networking, and more. We call these collectors, and they're managed by plugins, which support a variety of programming languages, including Go and Python.
Popular collectors include Nginx, Apache, MySQL, statsd, cgroups (containers, Docker, Kubernetes,
LXC, and more), Traefik, web server access.log
files, and much more.
See the full list of supported collectors.
Netdata's data collection is extensible, which means you can monitor anything you can get a metric for. You can even write a collector for your custom application using our plugin API.
We welcome contributions. So, feel free to join the team.
To report bugs, or get help, use GitHub Issues.
You can also find Netdata on:
Netdata is GPLv3+.
Netdata re-distributes other open-source tools and libraries. Please check the third party licenses.