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<!--
---
title: "Netdata"
date: 2020-04-06
custom_edit_url: https://github.com/netdata/netdata/edit/master/README.md
---
-->
# Netdata [](https://travis-ci.com/netdata/netdata) [](https://bestpractices.coreinfrastructure.org/projects/2231) [](https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-3.0) [](<>)
[](https://codeclimate.com/github/netdata/netdata)
[](https://www.codacy.com/app/netdata/netdata?utm_source=github.com&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=netdata/netdata&utm_campaign=Badge_Grade)
[](https://lgtm.com/projects/g/netdata/netdata/context:cpp)
[](https://lgtm.com/projects/g/netdata/netdata/context:javascript)
[](https://lgtm.com/projects/g/netdata/netdata/context:python)
---
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's running on
(including web servers, databases, applications), using **highly interactive web dashboards**.
A highly-efficient database **stores long-term historical metrics for days, weeks, or months**, all at 1-second
granularity. Run this long-term storage autonomously, or integrate Netdata with your existing monitoring toolchains
(Prometheus, Graphite, OpenTSDB, Kafka, Grafana, and more).
Netdata is **fast** and **efficient**, designed to permanently run on all systems (**physical** and **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**, along with
other systems derived from them, such as **Kubernetes** and **Docker**.
Netdata is not hosted by the CNCF but is the 3rd most starred open-source project in the [Cloud Native Computing
Foundation (CNCF) landscape](https://landscape.cncf.io/format=card-mode&grouping=no&sort=stars).
---
People get **addicted to Netdata**. Once you use it on your systems, **there is no going back**! _You've been warned..._
[](https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?text=Netdata,%20real-time%20performance%20and%20health%20monitoring,%20done%20right!&url=https://my-netdata.io/&via=linuxnetdata&hashtags=netdata,monitoring)
## Contents
1. [What does it look like?](#what-does-it-look-like) - Take a quick tour through the dashboard
2. [Our userbase](#user-base) - Enterprises we help monitor and our userbase
3. [Quickstart](#quickstart) - How to try it now on your systems
4. [Why Netdata](#why-netdata) - Why people love Netdata and how it compares with other solutions
5. [News](#news) - The latest news about Netdata
6. [How Netdata works](#how-it-works) - A high-level diagram of how Netdata works
7. [Infographic](#infographic) - Everything about Netdata in a single graphic
8. [Features](#features) - How you'll use Netdata on your systems
9. [Visualization](#visualization) - Learn about visual anomaly detection
10. [What Netdata monitors](#what-netdata-monitors) - See which apps/services Netdata auto-detects
11. [Documentation](#documentation) - Read the documentation
12. [Community](#community) - Discuss Netdata with others and get support
13. [License](#license) - Check Netdata's licencing
14. [Is it any good?](#is-it-any-good) - Yes.
15. [Is it awesome?](#is-it-awesome) - Yes.
## What does it look like?
The following animated GIF 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,
> **real-time**, and optimized to get the work done!
Want to see Netdata live? Check out any of our [live demos](https://www.netdata.cloud/#live-demo).
## User base
Netdata is used by hundreds of thousands of users all over the world. Check our [GitHub watchers
list](https://github.com/netdata/netdata/watchers). 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!
### Docker pulls
We provide Docker images for the most common architectures. These are statistics reported by Docker Hub:
[](https://hub.docker.com/r/netdata/netdata/)
[](https://hub.docker.com/r/firehol/netdata/)
[](https://hub.docker.com/r/titpetric/netdata/)
### Registry
When you install multiple Netdata, they are integrated into **one distributed application**, via a [Netdata
registry](/registry/README.md). 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:
[](https://registry.my-netdata.io/#menu_netdata_submenu_registry)
[](https://registry.my-netdata.io/#menu_netdata_submenu_registry)
[](https://registry.my-netdata.io/#menu_netdata_submenu_registry)
_In the last 24 hours:_<br/> [](https://registry.my-netdata.io/#menu_netdata_submenu_registry)
[](https://registry.my-netdata.io/#menu_netdata_submenu_registry)
[](https://registry.my-netdata.io/#menu_netdata_submenu_registry)
## Quickstart
To install Netdata from source on any Linux system (physical, virtual, container, IoT, edge) and keep it up to date with
our **nightly releases** automatically, run the following:
```bash
# make sure you run `bash` for your shell
bash
# install Netdata directly from GitHub source
bash <(curl -Ss https://my-netdata.io/kickstart.sh)
```
Starting with v1.12, Netdata collects anonymous usage information by default and sends it to Google Analytics. Read
about the information collected, and learn how to-opt, on our [anonymous statistics](/docs/anonymous-statistics.md) page.
The usage statistics are _vital_ for us, as we use them to discover bugs and prioritize new features. We thank you for
_actively_ contributing to Netdata's future.
To learn more about the pros and cons of using _nightly_ vs. _stable_ releases, see our [notice about the two options](/packaging/installer/README.md#nightly-vs-stable-releases).
The above command will:
- Install any required packages on your system (it will ask you to confirm before doing so)
- Compile it, install it, and start it.
More installation methods and additional options can be found at the [installation
page](/packaging/installer/README.md).
To try Netdata in a Docker container, run this:
```sh
docker run -d --name=netdata \
-p 19999:19999 \
-v netdatalib:/var/lib/netdata \
-v netdatacache:/var/cache/netdata \
-v /etc/passwd:/host/etc/passwd:ro \
-v /etc/group:/host/etc/group:ro \
-v /proc:/host/proc:ro \
-v /sys:/host/sys:ro \
-v /etc/os-release:/host/etc/os-release:ro \
--restart unless-stopped \
--cap-add SYS_PTRACE \
--security-opt apparmor=unconfined \
netdata/netdata
```
For more information about running Netdata in Docker, check the [docker installation page](/packaging/docker/README.md).
From Netdata v1.12 and above, anonymous usage information is collected by default and sent to Google Analytics. To read
more about the information collected and how to opt-out, check the [anonymous statistics
page](docs/anonymous-statistics.md).
## Why Netdata
Netdata has a quite different approach to monitoring.
Netdata is a monitoring agent you install on all your systems. It is:
- A **metrics collector** for system and application metrics (including web servers, databases, containers, and much
more),
- A **long-term metrics database** that stores recent metrics in memory and "spills" historical metrics to disk for
efficient long-term storage,
- A super fast, interactive, and modern **metrics visualizer** optimized for anomaly detection,
- And an **alarms notification engine** for detecting performance and availability issues.
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 |
| **Long-term, autonomous storage** at one-second granularity | Centralized metrics in an expensive data lake at 10s granularity |
| **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 **system administrators**, **DevOps engineers**, and **developers** for to not just visualize
metrics, but also troubleshoot complex performance problems.
## News
`April 6, 2020` - **[Netdata v1.21.0 released!](https://github.com/netdata/netdata/releases)**
Release v1.21.0 contains 2 new collectors, 3 new exporting connectors, 37 bug fixes, 46 improvements, and 25 documentation updates. We also made 26 bug fixes or improvements related to the upcoming release of Netdata Cloud.
We added a new **collector for Apache Pulsar**, a popular open-source distributed pub-sub messaging system. We use Pulsar in our Netdata Cloud infrastructure (more on that later this month!), and are excited to start sharing metrics about our own Pulsar systems when the time comes. The Pulsar collector attempts to auto-detect any running Pulsar processes, but you can always [configure the collector](https://docs.netdata.cloud/collectors/go.d.plugin/modules/pulsar/#configuration) based on your setup.
Also new in v1.21 is a **VerneMQ collector**. We use the open-source MQ Telemetry Transport (MQTT) broker for Netdata Cloud as well. As with Pulsar, you can [configure the VerneMQ collector](https://docs.netdata.cloud/collectors/go.d.plugin/modules/vernemq/#vernemq-monitoring-with-netdata) to auto-detect your installation in just a few steps.
Our experimental exporting engine received significant updates with new connectors for **[Prometheus remote write](https://docs.netdata.cloud/exporting/prometheus/remote_write/)**, **[MongoDB](https://docs.netdata.cloud/exporting/mongodb/)**, and **[AWS Kinesis Data Streams](https://docs.netdata.cloud/exporting/aws_kinesis/)**. You can now send Netdata metrics to more than 20 additional external storage providers for long-term archiving and deeper analysis. Learn more about the [exporting engine](https://docs.netdata.cloud/exporting/) in our documentation.
We upgraded our **TLS compatibility to include 1.3**, which applies to HTTPS for both Netdata's web server and streaming connections. TLS 1.3 is the most up-to-date version of the TLS protocol, and contains important fixes and improvements to ensure strong encryption. If you enabled TLS in the web server or streaming, Netdata attempts to use 1.3 by default, but you can also set the version and ciphers explicitly. Learn more in the [documentation](https://docs.netdata.cloud/web/server/#select-tls-version).
The Netdata dashboard has been **completely re-written in React**. While the look and behavior hasn't changed, these under-the-hood changes enable a suite of new features, UX improvements, and design overhauls. With React, we'll be able to work faster and better resource our talented engineers.
As part of the ongoing work to polish our **eBPF collector tech preview**, we've now proven the collector's performance is very good, and have vastly expanded the number of operating system versions the collector works on. Learn how to [enable it](https://docs.netdata.cloud/collectors/ebpf_process.plugin/) in our documentation. We've also extensively stress-tested the eBPF collector and found that it's impressively fast given the depth of metrics it collects! Read up on our benchmarking analysis [on GitHub](https://github.com/netdata/netdata/issues/8195).
---
See more news and previous releases at our [blog](https://blog.netdata.cloud) or our [releases
page](https://github.com/netdata/netdata/releases).
## How it works
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`](/collectors/README.md) |
| **Store** | Metrics are first stored in RAM in a custom database engine that then "spills" historical metrics to disk for efficient long-term metrics storage. | [`database`](/database/README.md) |
| **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`](/health/README.md) |
| **Stream** | A lockless independent worker is streaming metrics, in full detail and in real-time, to remote Netdata servers, as soon as they are collected. | [`streaming`](/streaming/README.md) |
| **Archive** | A lockless independent worker is down-sampling the metrics and pushes them to **backend** time-series databases. | [`backends`](/backends/README.md) |
| **Query** | Multiple independent workers are attached to the [internal web server](/web/server/README.md), servicing API requests, including [data queries](/web/api/queries/README.md). | [`web/api`](/web/api/README.md) |
The result is a highly efficient, low-latency system, supporting multiple readers and one writer on each metric.
## Infographic
This is a high level overview of Netdata feature set and architecture. Click it to to interact with it (it has direct
links to our documentation).
[](https://my-netdata.io/infographic.html)
## Features
This is what you should expect from Netdata:
### General
- **1s granularity** - The highest possible resolution for all metrics.
- **Unlimited metrics** - Netdata collects all the available metrics—the more, the better.
- **1% CPU utilization of a single core** - It's unbelievably optimized.
- **A few MB of RAM** - The highly-efficient database engine stores per-second metrics in RAM and then "spills"
historical metrics to disk long-term storage.
- **Minimal disk I/O** - While running, Netdata only writes historical metrics and reads `error` and `access` logs.
- **Zero configuration** - Netdata auto-detects everything, and can collect up to 10,000 metrics per server out of the
box.
- **Zero maintenance** - You just run it. Netdata does the rest.
- **Zero dependencies** - Netdata runs a custom web server for its static web files and its web API (though its
plugins may require additional libraries, depending on the applications monitored).
- **Scales to infinity** - You can install it on all your servers, containers, VMs, and IoT devices. Metrics are not
centralized by default, so there is no limit.
- **Several operating modes** - Autonomous host monitoring (the default), headless data collector, forwarding proxy,
store and forward proxy, central multi-host monitoring, in all possible configurations. Each node may have different
metrics retention policies and run with or without health monitoring.
### Health Monitoring & Alarms
- **Sophisticated alerting** - Netdata comes with hundreds of alarms **out of the box**! It supports dynamic
thresholds, hysteresis, alarm templates, multiple role-based notification methods, and more.
- **Notifications**: [alerta.io](/health/notifications/alerta/), [amazon sns](/health/notifications/awssns/),
[discordapp.com](/health/notifications/discord/), [email](/health/notifications/email/),
[flock.com](/health/notifications/flock/), [hangouts](/health/notifications/hangouts/),
[irc](/health/notifications/irc/), [kavenegar.com](/health/notifications/kavenegar/),
[messagebird.com](/health/notifications/messagebird/), [pagerduty.com](/health/notifications/pagerduty/),
[prowl](health/notifications/prowl/), [pushbullet.com](/health/notifications/pushbullet/),
[pushover.net](health/notifications/pushover/), [rocket.chat](/health/notifications/rocketchat/),
[slack.com](/health/notifications/slack/), [smstools3](/health/notifications/smstools3/),
[syslog](/health/notifications/syslog/), [telegram.org](/health/notifications/telegram/),
[twilio.com](/health/notifications/twilio/), [web](/health/notifications/web/) and [custom
notifications](/health/notifications/custom/).
### Integrations
- **Time-series databases** - Netdata can archive its metrics to **Graphite**, **OpenTSDB**, **Prometheus**, **AWS
Kinesis**, **MongoDB**, **JSON document DBs**, in the same or lower resolution (lower: to prevent it from congesting
these servers due to the amount of data collected). Netdata also supports **Prometheus remote write API**, which
allows storing metrics to **Elasticsearch**, **Gnocchi**, **InfluxDB**, **Kafka**, **PostgreSQL/TimescaleDB**,
**Splunk**, **VictoriaMetrics** and a lot of other [storage
providers](https://prometheus.io/docs/operating/integrations/#remote-endpoints-and-storage).
## Visualization
- **Stunning interactive dashboards** - Our dashboard is mouse-, touchpad-, and touch-screen friendly in 2 themes:
`slate` (dark) and `white`.
- **Amazingly fast visualization** - Even on low-end hardware, the dashboard responds to all queries in less than 1 ms
per metric.
- **Visual anomaly detection** - Our UI/UX emphasizes the relationships between charts so you can better detect
anomalies visually.
- **Embeddable** - Charts can be embedded on your web pages, wikis and blogs. You can even use [Atlassian's Confluence
as a monitoring dashboard](/web/gui/confluence/README.md).
- **Customizable** - You can build custom dashboards using simple HTML. No JavaScript needed!
### Positive and negative values
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._
### Autoscaled y-axis
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 are synchronized
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 with`SHIFT` + `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
> [My nodes menu](/registry/README.md).
### Highlighted time-frame
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 [My nodes
> menu](/registry/README.md).
## What Netdata monitors
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**](/collectors/plugins.d/README.md), which support a variety of programming languages, including Go an
|
