To begin monitoring our Docker deployments, we must first set up an endpoint to send our monitored values to. Graphite is a popular stack for collecting various metrics. Its plaintext protocol is very popular because of its simplicity. Many third-party tools understand this simple protocol. Later, we will show you how easy it is to send data to Graphite after we finish setting it up.
Another feature of graphite is that it can render the data it gathers into graphs. We can then consolidate these graphs to build a dashboard. The dashboard we crafted in the end will show the various kinds of information that we need to monitor our Docker application.
In this section, we will set up the following components of Graphite to create a minimal stack: