Setting up the Grafana software for standard IT infrastructure monitoring purposes on our Alpine Linux virtual machine

Welcome back to another tutorial from our Alpine Linux explorations tutorial series.

This time we are going to run the Grafana software on our Alpine Linux virtual machine for standard IT infrastructure monitoring purposes.?

??We need to complete several steps to get it working correctly.

1. We need to power on our Alpine Linux virtual machine from the Oracle Virtual Box Manager.

2. Once our Alpine Linux virtual machine execution environment has fully booted we are ready to begin the process – system ready.

3. We need to open the Linux Terminal.

4. We must switch to the root user to run the necessary commands to install the Grafana software correctly.?

5. We first need to update our Alpine Linux virtual machine execution environment. First, run the command ‘apk update’.

6. We then need to run the command ‘apk upgrade’.

7. Now the Alpine Linux virtual machine execution environment is fully updated.?

8. We need to run the command ‘reboot’.

9. Now we need to log back in, open the Linux Terminal again and switch to the root account.

10. Now let's search for our Grafana software packages.

11. Now we are installing our Grafana software packages.

12. Starting our Grafana service on our Alpine Linux Virtual Machine execution environment.

13. Our Grafana software is installed.

14. Now we can add Grafana to our Alpine Linux Virtual machine execution environment autostart.

15. The Grafana software is active and running on our Alpine Linux Virtual Machine execution environment.

?The Grafana software is now installed and we can proceed to configure it to suit our various needs.

For Grafana we were able to skip some steps since it has its own built-in mini web server and sqlite3?subsystems. This allows for faster and much easier configurations and deployments on the Alpine Linux execution environment.

We would generally have had to get the Lighttpd web server up and running first and get our configurations altered to enable the fast_cgi option and of course, we would need to handle/troubleshoot many permission and symlink-related issues before fully deploying the software.

But none of that was required here. It felt good, like a breath of fresh air.

The Grafana software is now installed and we can proceed to configure it to suit our various needs.

?Well, that was most enjoyable. See you in the next one!?#linux