path: root/README.md

# Netdata [![Build Status](https://travis-ci.com/netdata/netdata.svg?branch=master)](https://travis-ci.com/netdata/netdata) [![CII Best Practices](https://bestpractices.coreinfrastructure.org/projects/2231/badge)](https://bestpractices.coreinfrastructure.org/projects/2231) [![License: GPL v3+](https://img.shields.io/badge/License-GPL%20v3%2B-blue.svg)](https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-3.0) [![analytics](https://www.google-analytics.com/collect?v=1&aip=1&t=pageview&_s=1&ds=github&dr=https%3A%2F%2Fgithub.com%2Fnetdata%2Fnetdata&dl=https%3A%2F%2Fmy-netdata.io%2Fgithub%2Freadme&_u=MAC~&cid=5792dfd7-8dc4-476b-af31-da2fdb9f93d2&tid=UA-64295674-3)](<>)

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---

**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**.

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**.<br/>
Once you use it on your systems, **there is no going back**! *You have been warned...*

![image](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/2662304/48305662-9de82980-e537-11e8-9f5b-aa1a60fbb82f.png)

[![Tweet about Netdata!](https://img.shields.io/twitter/url/http/shields.io.svg?style=social&label=Tweet%20about%20netdata)](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.  [How it looks](#how-it-looks) - have a quick look at it
2.  [User base](#user-base) - who uses Netdata?
3.  [Quick Start](#quick-start) - try it now on your systems
4.  [Why Netdata](#why-netdata) - why people love Netdata, how it compares with other solutions
5.  [News](#news) - latest news about Netdata
6.  [How it works](#how-it-works) - high level diagram of how Netdata works
7.  [infographic](#infographic) - everything about Netdata, in a page
8.  [Features](#features) - what features does it have
9.  [Visualization](#visualization) - unique visualization features
10. [What does it monitor](#what-does-it-monitor) - which metrics it collects
11. [Documentation](#documentation) - read the docs
12. [Community](#community) - discuss with others and get support
13. [License](#license) - check the license of Netdata
14. [Is it any good?](#is-it-any-good) - Yes
15. [Is it awesome?](#is-it-awesome) - Yes

## How it looks

The following animated image, shows the top part of a typical Netdata dashboard.

![peek 2018-11-11 02-40](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/2662304/48307727-9175c800-e55b-11e8-92d8-a581d60a4889.gif)

*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](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:

[![netdata/netdata (official)](https://img.shields.io/docker/pulls/netdata/netdata.svg?label=netdata/netdata+%28official%29)](https://hub.docker.com/r/netdata/netdata/) [![firehol/netdata (deprecated)](https://img.shields.io/docker/pulls/firehol/netdata.svg?label=firehol/netdata+%28deprecated%29)](https://hub.docker.com/r/firehol/netdata/) [![titpetric/netdata (donated)](https://img.shields.io/docker/pulls/titpetric/netdata.svg?label=titpetric/netdata+%28third+party%29)](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/#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:

[![User Base](https://registry.my-netdata.io/api/v1/badge.svg?chart=netdata.registry_entries&dimensions=persons&label=user%20base&units=M&value_color=blue&precision=2&divide=1000000&v43)](https://registry.my-netdata.io/#menu_netdata_submenu_registry) [![Monitored Servers](https://registry.my-netdata.io/api/v1/badge.svg?chart=netdata.registry_entries&dimensions=machines&label=servers%20monitored&units=k&divide=1000&value_color=orange&precision=2&v43)](https://registry.my-netdata.io/#menu_netdata_submenu_registry) [![Sessions Served](https://registry.my-netdata.io/api/v1/badge.svg?chart=netdata.registry_sessions&label=sessions%20served&units=M&value_color=yellowgreen&precision=2&divide=1000000&v43)](https://registry.my-netdata.io/#menu_netdata_submenu_registry)

*in the last 24 hours:*<br/> [![New Users Today](https://registry.my-netdata.io/api/v1/badge.svg?chart=netdata.registry_entries&dimensions=persons&after=-86400&options=unaligned&group=incremental-sum&label=new%20users%20today&units=null&value_color=blue&precision=0&v42)](https://registry.my-netdata.io/#menu_netdata_submenu_registry) [![New Machines Today](https://registry.my-netdata.io/api/v1/badge.svg?chart=netdata.registry_entries&dimensions=machines&group=incremental-sum&after=-86400&options=unaligned&label=servers%20added%20today&units=null&value_color=orange&precision=0&v42)](https://registry.my-netdata.io/#menu_netdata_submenu_registry) [![Sessions Today](https://registry.my-netdata.io/api/v1/badge.svg?chart=netdata.registry_sessions&after=-86400&group=incremental-sum&options=unaligned&label=sessions%20served%20today&units=null&value_color=yellowgreen&precision=0&v42)](https://registry.my-netdata.io/#menu_netdata_submenu_registry)

## Quick Start

![](https://registry.my-netdata.io/api/v1/badge.svg?chart=web_log_nginx.requests_per_url&options=unaligned&dimensions=kickstart&group=sum&after=-3600&label=last+hour&units=installations&value_color=orange&precision=0) ![](https://registry.my-netdata.io/api/v1/badge.svg?chart=web_log_nginx.requests_per_url&options=unaligned&dimensions=kickstart&group=sum&after=-86400&label=today&units=installations&precision=0)

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)
```

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/#installation).

To try Netdata in a docker container, run this:

```sh
docker run -d --name=netdata \
  -p 19999:19999 \
  -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 /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock:ro \
  --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/).

![image](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/2662304/48304090-fd384080-e51b-11e8-80ae-eecb03118dda.png)

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, etc)
-   a **time-series database** - all stored in memory (does not touch the disks while it runs)
-   a **metrics visualizer** - super fast, interactive, modern, optimized for anomaly detection
-   an **alarms notification engine** - an advanced watchdog 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|
|**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.

## News

`Nov 27th, 2019` - **[Netdata v1.19.0 released!](https://github.com/netdata/netdata/releases)**

Release v1.19.0 contains 2 new collectors, 19 bug fixes, 17 improvements, and 19 documentation updates.

We completed a major rewrite of our **web log collector** to dramatically improve its flexibility and performance. The [new collector](https://github.com/netdata/go.d.plugin/pull/141), written entirely in Go, can parse and chart logs from Nginx and Apache servers, and combines numerous improvements. Netdata now supports the LTSV log format, creates charts for TLS and cipher usage, and is amazingly fast. In a test using SSD storage, the collector parsed the logs for 200,000 requests in about 200ms, using 30% of a single core.

This Go-based collector also has powerful custom log parsing capabilities, which means we're one step closer to a generic application log parser for Netdata. We're continuing to work on this parser to support more application log formatting in the future.

We have a new tutorial on [enabling the Go web log collector](https://docs.netdata.cloud/docs/tutorials/collect-apache-nginx-web-logs/) and using it with Nginx and/or Apache access logs with minimal configuration. Thanks to [Wing924](https://github.com/Wing924) for starting the Go rewrite!

We introduced more **cmocka unit testing** to Netdata. In this release, we're testing how Netdata's internal web server processes HTTP requests—the first step to improve the quality of code throughout, reduce bugs, and make refactoring easier. We wanted to validate the web server's behavior but needed to build a layer of parametric testing on top of the CMocka test runner. Read all about our process of testing and selecting cmocka on our blog post: [Building an agile team's 'safety harness' with cmocka and FOSS](https://blog.netdata.cloud/agile-team-cmocka-foss/).

Netdata's **Unbound collector** was also [completely rewritten in Go](https://github.com/netdata/go.d.plugin/pull/287) to improve how it collects and displays metrics. This new version can get dozens of metrics, including details on queries, cache, uptime, and even show per-thread metrics. See our [tutorial](https://docs.netdata.cloud/docs/tutorials/collect-unbound-metrics/) on enabling the new collector via Netdata's amazing auto-detection feature.

We [fixed an error](https://github.com/netdata/netdata/pull/7220) where **invalid spikes** appeared on certain charts by improving the incremental counter reset/wraparound detection algorithm.

Netdata can now send [**health alarm notifications to IRC channels**](https://docs.netdata.cloud/health/notifications/irc/) thanks to [Strykar](https://github.com/Strykar)!

And, Netdata can now monitor [**AM2320 sensors**](https://docs.netdata.cloud/collectors/python.d.plugin/am2320/), thanks to hard work from [Tom Buck](https://github.com/tommybuck).

---

`Oct 18th, 2019` - **[Netdata v1.18.1 released!](https://github.com/netdata/netdata/releases)**

Release v1.18.1 contains 17 bug fixes, 5 improvements, and 5 documentation updates.

The patch has several bug fixes, mainly related to FreeBSD and the binary package generation process. 

Netdata can now [send notifications to Google Hangouts Chat](https://docs.netdata.cloud/health/notifications/hangouts/)! 

On certain systems, the `slabinfo` plugin introduced in v1.18.0 added thousands of new metrics. We decided the collector's usefulness to most users didn't justify the increase in resource requirements. This release disables the collector by default.

Finally, we added a chart under **Netdata Monitoring** to present a better view of the RAM used by the [database engine (dbengine)](https://docs.netdata.cloud/database/engine/). The chart doesn't currently take into consideration the RAM used for slave nodes, so we intend to add more related charts in the future.

---

`Oct 10th, 2019` - **[Netdata v1.18.0 released!](https://github.com/netdata/netdata/releases)**

Release v1.18.0 contains 5 new collectors, 16 bug fixes, 27 improvements, and 20 documentation updates.

The **database engine** is now the default method of storing metrics in Netdata. You immediately get more efficient and configurable long-term metrics storage without any work on your part. By saving recent metrics in RAM and "spilling" historical metrics to disk for long-term storage, the database engine is laying the foundation for many more improvements to distributed metrics.

We even have a [tutorial](https://docs.netdata.cloud/docs/tutorials/longer-metrics-storage/) on switching to the database engine and getting the most from it. Or, just read up on [how performant](https://docs.netdata.cloud/database/engine/#evaluation) the database engine really is.

Both our `python.d` and `go.d` plugins now have more **intelligent auto-detection** by periodically dump a list of active modules to disk. When Netdata starts, such as after a reboot, the plugins use this list of known services to re-establish metrics collection much more reliably. No more worrying if the service or application you need to monitor starts up minutes after Netdata.

Two of our new collectors will help those with Hadoop big data infrastructures. The **HDFS and Zookeeper collection modules** come with essential alarms requested by our community and Netdata's auto-detection capabilities to keep the required configuration to an absolute minimum. Read up on the process via our [HDFS and Zookeeper tutorial](https://docs.netdata.cloud/docs/tutorials/monitor-hadoop-cluster/).

Speaking of new collectors—we also added the ability to collect metrics from SLAB cache, Gearman, and vCenter Server Appliances.

Before v1.18, if you wanted to create alarms for each dimension in a single chart, you need to write separate entities for each dimension—not very efficient or user-friendly. New **dimension templates** fix that hassle. Now, a single entity can automatically generate alarms for any number of dimensions in a chart, even those you weren't aware of! Our [tutorial on dimension templates](https://docs.netdata.cloud/docs/tutorials/dimension-templates/) has all the details.

v1.18 brings support for installing Netdata on offline or air-gapped systems. To help users comply with strict security policies, our installation scripts can now install Netdata using previously-downloaded tarball and checksums instead of downloading them at runtime. We have guides for installing offline via `kickstart.sh` or `kickstart-static64.sh` in our [installation documentation](https://docs.netdata.cloud/packaging/installer/#offline-installations). We're excited to bring real-time monitoring to once-inaccessible systems!

---

`Sep 12th, 2019` - **[Netdata v1.17.1 released!](https://github.com/netdata/netdata/releases)**

Release v1.17.1 contains 2 bug fixes, 6 improvements, and 2 documentation updates.

The main reason for the patch release is an essential fix to the repeating alarm notifications we introduced in v1.17.0. If you enabled repeating notifications, Netdata would not then send CLEAR notifications for the selected alarms.

The release also includes a significant improvement to Netdata's auto-detection capabilities, especially after a system restart. Netdata now remembers which `python.d` plugin jobs were successfully collecting data the last time it was running, and retries to run those jobs for 5 minutes before giving up. As a result, you no longer have to worry if your system starts Netdata before the monitored services have had a chance to start properly. We will complete the same improvement for `go.d` plugins in v1.18.0.

We also made some improvements to our binary packages and added a [neat sample custom dashboard](https://docs.netdata.cloud/web/gui/custom/#dash-multi-host-dashboard) that can show charts from multiple Netdata agents. 

---

`Sep 3rd, 2019` - **[Netdata v1.17.0 released!](https://github.com/netdata/netdata/releases)**

Release v1.17.0 contains 38 bug fixes, 33 improvements, and 20 documentation updates.

You can now change the data collection frequency at will, without losing previously collected values. A major improvement to the new database engine allows you not only to store metrics at variable granularity, but also to autoscale the time axis of the charts, depending on the data collection frequencies used during the presented time.

You can also now monitor VM performance from one or more vCenter servers with a new [VSphere collector](https://docs.netdata.cloud/collectors/go.d.plugin/modules/vsphere/). In addition, the `proc` plugin now also collects ZRAM device performance metrics and the `apps` plugin monitors process uptime for the defined process groups.

Continuing our efforts to integrate with as many existing solutions as possible, you can now directly archive metrics from Netdata to MongoDB via a new backend.

Netdata badges now support international (UTF8) characters! We also made our URL parser smarter, not only for international character support, but also for other strange API queries.

We also added `.DEB` packages to our binary distribution repositories at [Packagecloud](https://packagecloud.io/netdata), a new collector for Linux zram device metrics, and support for plain text email notifications.

This release includes several fixes and improvements to the TLS encryption feature we introduced in v1.16.0. First, encryption slave-to-master streaming connections wasn't working as intended. And second, our community helped us discover cases where HTTP requests were not correctly redirected to HTTPS with TLS enabled. This release mitigates those issues and improves TLS support overall.

Finally, we improved the way Netdata displays charts with no metrics. By default, Netdata displays charts