Custom alerts and data visualization let you quickly identify and prevent performance issues while running containers.
Containers can be quickly provisioned, moved between hosts, or destroyed, in which case their data disappears with them. By nature, this makes it hard to track changes and monitor their status, making the real time collection of data and the auto-discovery of new instances a desired, even necessary, feature.
Resources are shared between the host and all containers, but each container can have its own limits for resources like CPU or memory usage, and you need to monitor them individually. The host may not be using all the available resources, but a container may be struggling against its own constraints, which will lead to poor performance.
Container logs are sent to the default output and error streams of the host operating system. Those streams need to be collected, adequately processed, and tagged with metadata like the container name and ID for later processing. And this needs to be done for each and every container running in your network.
Diagnose network issues by continuously tracking the status, availability, and uptime of your containers. Show CPU usage, application performance, data traffic, memory usage, and other key container metrics in real time. Visualize monitoring data in clear graphs and dashboards to identify problems more easily. Gain the overview you need to troubleshoot all kinds of issues with your Docker environment.
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The sensor Docker Container Status uses lookups to determine the status values of one or more sensor channels. The possible states are defined in the corresponding lookup file, and you can always customize the behavior of the respective sensor channel by editing the file.
To monitor your Docker containers with PRTG, you can use the sensor Docker Container Status. This sensor supports the IPv4 protocol and has a low impact on performance.
To establish a connection between the sensor Docker Container Status and your container, you need to provide certificates and private keys. Follow the steps in our Knowledge Base Article.
PRTG is an all-in-one IT infrastructure monitoring tool that includes a special built-in sensor for monitoring your Docker environments. That means you can do away with having to rely on a variety of individualized solutions, which can carry potential risks such as incompatibility with your current workflow and even security issues.
PRTG features an easy-to-read main dashboard with an overview of all your containers (as well as other endpoints) and their data at a glance. And with the auto-discovery, PRTG can automatically track new containers as they are deployed.
You can customize dashboards to your needs and share them via a unique URL that that can be used for internal or external access. Publish the dashboard internally for colleagues or the management team, or show it on network operation center screens, for example.
PRTG automatically triggers configurable alerts based on metrics defined by you. As soon as performance or reliability issues arise, you will be informed by SMS, email, push notification, and more.
You can also schedule automated reports that PRTG aggregates and exports for you to send them, for example, to the management team.
PRTG comes with more than 250 native sensor types for monitoring your entire on-premises, cloud, and hybrid cloud environment out of the box. Check out some examples below!
The Docker Container Status sensor monitors the health and performance of a Docker container. It can show the following:
The VMware Host Hardware (WBEM) sensor monitors information about the hardware of an ESXi server using Web-based Enterprise Management (WBEM). It can show the following:
The Microsoft Azure Virtual Machine sensor monitors the status of a virtual machine (VM) in a Microsoft Azure subscription. It can show the following:
See the PRTG Manual for a list of all available sensor types.
Custom alerts and data visualization let you quickly identify and prevent performance issues while running containers.
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Containers are a way of packaging applications and all its dependencies (such as libraries and configuration files) into bundles that can be easily deployed and run across a variety of environments. This increases application portability and operational efficiency. A containerized application will run the same on any host, ending the "it works on my machine" dilemma.
Docker is an open-source platform for building, deploying, and managing containers. Since the original release in 2013, the platform has been used by more than 13 million developers, who have developed more than 7 million applications.
Container orchestration refers to the automated management, deployment, scaling, and networking of containers, which are lightweight, portable units of software that include everything needed to run an application, such as code, runtime, libraries, and system tools.
Orchestration involves coordinating and managing multiple containers to work together as a system. This includes starting and stopping containers, monitoring their health, scaling up or down, and ensuring they are networked correctly.
The most widely used container orchestration platform is Kubernetes.
Use cases of container orchestration include:
Microservices architecture: Managing the deployment and scaling of multiple microservices.
DevOps practices: Continuous Integration/Continuous Deployment (CI/CD) pipelines benefit from the automation and scalability provided by orchestration tools.
Cloud-native applications: Applications designed to leverage the cloud's distributed nature benefit from container orchestration.
Containers only include what is needed to run the application and share resources with the host OS, so they use less resources when compared with Virtual Machines (VMs). A typical container image can be tens of megabytes in size, while a similar VM image can occupy tens of gigabytes.
Because they are lighter than virtual machines, you can run more containers than VMs on a given host. This way, you can optimize your resource usage and save money on infrastructure costs.
Containers allow for increased security since application processes are isolated inside the container. So, even if a hacker manages to break into a containerized application, he will still be separated from the underlying operating system and from your corporate network.
You need a container monitoring tool for the same reasons you already use a network monitoring tool: to increase the availability of your applications by proactively identifying issues and quickly reacting to events, and to ensure that they are running at their best by monitoring their resource usage and behavior through time.
Paessler PRTG is your comprehensive monitoring software for on-premises, cloud-based, or virtualized Windows, Linux, and Docker environments. No plugins required.
In PRTG, “sensors” are the basic monitoring elements. One sensor usually monitors one measured value in your network, for example the traffic of a switch port, the CPU load of a server, or the free space on a disk drive. On average, you need about 5-10 sensors per device or one sensor per switch port.
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Paessler PRTG is used by companies of all sizes. Sysadmins love PRTG because it makes their job a whole lot easier.
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