Guide: Observability Stack — Prometheus, Loki, Grafana

Guide: MinIO as an S3-Compatible Backup Target

Self-hosted S3-compatible object storage for backups: MinIO behind an Nginx proxy, with an rclone-based backup agent and versioned buckets. Your offsite backups without a cloud bill.

Guide: MinIO as an S3-Compatible Backup Target

Self-hosted S3-compatible object storage for backups: MinIO behind an Nginx proxy, with an rclone-based backup agent and versioned buckets. Your offsite backups without a cloud bill.

Metrics, logs, and dashboards in one compose file: Prometheus scraping node-exporter and cAdvisor, Loki with Alloy for log aggregation, and a pre-provisioned Grafana. The stack I use to watch everything else on this site.

What this is

A deployment guide with working examples — not a downloadable product. Everything below is the actual configuration I use, abridged to the parts that matter.

Deployment example

services:
  prometheus:
    image: prom/prometheus:${PROMETHEUS_VERSION:-v2.55.0}
    container_name: prometheus
    restart: unless-stopped
    networks:
      - observability
    volumes:
      - ./config/prometheus.yml:/etc/prometheus/prometheus.yml:ro
      - prometheus_data:/prometheus
    command:
      - --config.file=/etc/prometheus/prometheus.yml
      - --storage.tsdb.path=/prometheus
      - --storage.tsdb.retention.time=${PROMETHEUS_RETENTION:-30d}
      - --web.console.libraries=/etc/prometheus/console_libraries
      - --web.console.templates=/etc/prometheus/consoles
      - --web.enable-lifecycle
    logging:
      driver: json-file
      options:
        max-size: 10m
        max-file: '3'
    labels:
      - observability.service=prometheus
  grafana:
    image: grafana/grafana:${GRAFANA_VERSION:-11.4.0}
    container_name: grafana
    restart: unless-stopped
    networks:
      - observability
    volumes:
      - grafana_data:/var/lib/grafana
      - ./config/grafana/datasources:/etc/grafana/provisioning/datasources:ro
      - ./config/grafana/dashboards:/etc/grafana/provisioning/dashboards:ro
      - ./config/grafana/dashboards-definitions:/var/lib/grafana/dashboards:ro
    environment:
      - GF_SECURITY_ADMIN_USER=${GRAFANA_ADMIN_USER:-admin}
      - GF_SECURITY_ADMIN_PASSWORD=${GRAFANA_ADMIN_PASSWORD:-admin}
      - GF_INSTALL_PLUGINS=${GRAFANA_PLUGINS:-grafana-piechart-panel}
      - GF_SERVER_ROOT_URL=${GRAFANA_ROOT_URL:-http://localhost:3000}
      - GF_AUTH_ANONYMOUS_ENABLED=${GRAFANA_ANON_AUTH:-false}
    logging:
      driver: json-file
      options:
        max-size: 10m
        max-file: '3'
    labels:
      - observability.service=grafana

Excerpt — prometheus, grafana from the compose file. The remaining services (proxies, init jobs, exporters) follow the same pattern and mount their configuration from a config/ directory.

Essential environment variables

Copy .env.example to .env and at minimum set:

NETWORK_NAME=observability
PROMETHEUS_VERSION=v2.55.0
PROMETHEUS_RETENTION=30d
NODE_EXPORTER_VERSION=v1.8.2
CADVISOR_VERSION=latest
LOKI_VERSION=3.2.0

Production checklist

• Change GRAFANA_ADMIN_PASSWORD in .env
• Set GRAFANA_ANON_AUTH=false
• Configure Prometheus remote_write if using long-term storage
• Set Loki retention in config/loki.yml
• Add SSL reverse proxy (Nginx + Let's Encrypt)
• Restart: docker compose restart after config changes
• Backup: docker compose down + tar volumes

A guide, not a product. This page is deployment documentation with working examples — there is no zip, no download, no support contract. You adapt the patterns to your own environment, and you own the result.

Want this running production-grade in your infrastructure instead? I set this up for teams as the one-day Observability workshop — details on the consulting page.