Netdata: Self-Hosted Real-Time Server Monitoring

Netdata is a distributed monitoring agent that collects thousands of metrics from systems, hardware, containers, and applications with per-second granularity. With over 77,000 GitHub stars, it is one of the most widely deployed open-source monitoring tools. Netdata auto-discovers services, requires zero configuration for most use cases, and serves interactive dashboards directly from the monitored server.

Self-hosting Netdata gives you complete visibility into your infrastructure without sending telemetry data to external services.

Key Features

• Per-second metric collection with thousands of metrics out of the box
• Zero-configuration auto-discovery for services, containers, and hardware
• Interactive, real-time dashboards served directly from each monitored node
• Machine learning-powered anomaly detection built into every metric
• Intelligent alerting with pre-configured health checks for common issues
• Distributed architecture — each node runs independently with optional central streaming
• Lightweight agent with minimal CPU and memory overhead (typically under 1% CPU)
• 800+ integrations covering databases, web servers, containers, cloud services, and hardware

Why Self-Host Netdata?

Per-second visibility without data limits. Cloud monitoring services typically collect metrics every 30-60 seconds and charge for data retention. Netdata collects metrics every second by default and stores them locally on each node. You see infrastructure problems in real time, not minutes after they happen.

No metric cardinality charges. Cloud observability platforms charge per metric, per host, or per data point. Netdata collects thousands of metrics per server at no cost. Monitor CPU, memory, disk, network, containers, databases, and application metrics without worrying about bill spikes.

Instant deployment. Netdata requires no configuration to start monitoring. Install the agent on any Linux server and it immediately auto-discovers running services, collects metrics, and serves a dashboard. Add a new server to your fleet in under a minute.

Your monitoring data stays private. Server performance data reveals your infrastructure architecture, traffic patterns, and capacity. Self-hosted Netdata keeps all this operational intelligence on your own servers instead of streaming it to a third-party analytics platform.

System Requirements

Resource	Minimum	Recommended
CPU	1 vCPU	2 vCPUs
RAM	512 MB	2 GB
Storage	5 GB SSD	20 GB SSD
OS	Ubuntu 22.04+	Ubuntu 24.04

Netdata is designed for minimal overhead. The agent typically uses less than 1% CPU and 100-200 MB RAM. Storage requirements depend on retention period — the default database engine (dbengine) compresses metrics efficiently.

Getting Started

Deploy Netdata on your VPS using Docker Compose through Dokploy. Our deployment guide covers setup, persistent storage for metrics history, and SSL configuration.

Deploy Netdata with Dokploy →

Alternatives

• Grafana — Observability platform for visualizing metrics from Prometheus, InfluxDB, and other sources
• Prometheus — Pull-based monitoring system with a powerful query language
• Glances — Cross-platform system monitoring tool with a terminal and web interface
• Zabbix — Enterprise-grade monitoring for networks, servers, and cloud infrastructure

FAQ

How is Netdata different from Prometheus + Grafana? Netdata is an all-in-one agent that collects, stores, visualizes, and alerts — all with zero configuration. Prometheus + Grafana is a modular stack requiring separate setup for collection, storage, and dashboards. Netdata is ideal for instant monitoring; Prometheus + Grafana excels at custom long-term analytics.

Does Netdata work with Docker containers? Yes. Netdata auto-discovers Docker containers and collects per-container CPU, memory, network, and disk I/O metrics. It also monitors container orchestrators like Kubernetes and Docker Swarm.

How long does Netdata retain metrics? By default, Netdata stores metrics with per-second granularity for recent data and automatically downsamples older data. On a server with 1 GB RAM allocated to Netdata, you can typically retain weeks to months of data depending on the number of metrics.

Can I centralize metrics from multiple servers? Yes. Netdata supports streaming metrics from child nodes to a parent node. The parent aggregates data from your entire fleet into a single dashboard. This architecture scales to hundreds of nodes.

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App data sourced from selfh.st open-source directory.