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Native Postgres

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For PostgreSQL installed directly on a server rather than in a container or a managed service, run the collector as a container alongside it and add node_exporter on each database host.

This page assumes you have already created the database login and written collector.toml as described in Collector Installation.

Running the collector

Section titled “Running the collector”

On a Docker host, with the config file in the current directory. :latest is convenient while you are trying this out; for anything you intend to keep running, pin a release tag or a digest so a restart cannot silently change the running version:

Terminal window
docker run --rm \
  -v "$PWD/collector.toml:/etc/dbg-collector/collector.toml:ro" \
  -e DBG_SERVER_SECRET="<secret from above>" \
  -e DB_PASSWORD="<your database password>" \
  dbgorillapublic.azurecr.io/dbg-collector:latest \   # pin a release tag in production
  --config-file /etc/dbg-collector/collector.toml

Because it is an ordinary container, it also runs under Docker Compose, or in Kubernetes. For Kubernetes there is an official Helm chart at oci://dbgorillapublic.azurecr.io/charts/dbg-collector, which takes the same collector.toml and requires Kubernetes 1.25 or newer:

Terminal window
helm install dbg-collector oci://dbgorillapublic.azurecr.io/charts/dbg-collector \
  --namespace dbg-collector --create-namespace \
  --set-file config.inline=./collector.toml \
  --set secrets.serverSecret="<secret from above>" \
  --set-string secrets.databasePasswords.DB_PASSWORD="<your database password>"

The chart creates only core Kubernetes objects, with no operator and no custom resources, and its pod meets the restricted Pod Security Standard, so it installs into a namespace that enforces it. The container runs as non-root with a read-only root filesystem.

The requirements are the same everywhere: mount the configuration file, supply the variables it references, and allow network access to your databases and their hosts plus egress to DBGorilla over 443.

node_exporter

Section titled “node_exporter”

node_exporter is an open-source Prometheus exporter that the collector reads host metrics from. The collector discovers exporters automatically on the default port 9100 on your database hosts. Where port 9100 is not exposed, set mode = "disabled" under [component.provider.node_exporter] so the probe does not stall discovery.

It is owned by the Prometheus project and free to download from github.com/prometheus/node_exporter. It is packaged in EPEL for RHEL-based distributions, and runs under Docker with:

Terminal window
docker run -d \
  --net="host" \
  --pid="host" \
  -v "/:/host:ro,rslave" \
  quay.io/prometheus/node-exporter:latest \
  --path.rootfs=/host

With metrics flowing, DBGorilla is usable from the dashboard. To bring your team in, see Organization Management.