Collecting metrics
Netdata can collect metrics from hundreds of different sources, be they internal data created by the system itself, or external data created by services or applications. To see all of the sources Netdata collects from, view our list of supported collectors, and then view our quickstart guide to get up-and-running.
There are two essential points to understand about how collecting metrics works in Netdata:
- All collectors are installed by default with every installation of Netdata. You do not need to install collectors manually to collect metrics from new sources.
- Upon startup, Netdata will auto-detect any application or service that has a collector, as long as both the collector and the app/service are configured correctly.
Most users will want to enable a new Netdata collector for their app/service. For those details, see our quickstart guide.
Take your next steps with collectors#
Collectors configuration reference
Guides#
Monitor Nginx or Apache web server log files with Netdata
Monitor CockroachDB metrics with Netdata
Monitor Unbound DNS servers with Netdata
Monitor a Hadoop cluster with Netdata
Related features#
Dashboards: Visualize your newly-collect metrics in real-time using Netdata's built-in dashboard.
Backends: Extend our built-in database engine, which supports long-term metrics storage, by archiving metrics to like Graphite, Prometheus, MongoDB, TimescaleDB, and more.
Exporting: An experimental refactoring of our backends system with a modular system and support for exporting metrics to multiple systems simultaneously.