Essential Ops Guide: Configuring Host Metrics Monitoring with Node Exporter and SkyWalking

Preparation

SkyWalking version 10.3

OpenTelemetry Collector Contrib otelcol-contrib_0.143.1_linux_amd64 Prometheus Node Exporter

node_exporter-1.10.2.linux-amd64.tar

Principle

SkyWalking cannot scrape Node Exporter metrics directly. An OpenTelemetry Collector pulls the Prometheus metrics from Node Exporter and forwards them to the SkyWalking OAP server via OTLP. Data flow: Node Exporter → OpenTelemetry Collector (Prometheus receiver) → SkyWalking OAP (MAL engine) → SkyWalking Web UI.

Step 1 – Install Prometheus Node Exporter

# Move binary to a global location
sudo mv node_exporter-1.10.2.linux-amd64/node_exporter /usr/local/bin/
# Make it executable
sudo chmod +x /usr/local/bin/node_exporter
# Create a non‑root user for security
sudo useradd -rs /sbin/nologin node_exporter
# Create systemd service file
sudo vim /etc/systemd/system/node-exporter.service
[Unit]
Description=Node Exporter - Linux host metrics collection
Documentation=https://prometheus.io/docs/guides/node-exporter/
After=network.target
[Service]
User=node_exporter
Group=node_exporter
Type=simple
ExecStart=/usr/local/bin/node_exporter \
  --web.listen-address=0.0.0.0:9100
Restart=on-failure
RestartSec=5s
[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

# Reload systemd, start the service, enable at boot, verify status
sudo systemctl daemon-reload
sudo systemctl start node-exporter
sudo systemctl enable node-exporter
sudo systemctl status node-exporter
# Local test
curl http://127.0.0.1:9100/metrics
# Remote test (replace with server IP)
curl http://<your-server-ip>:9100/metrics

Step 2 – Adjust SkyWalking OAP configuration

The file /config/otel-oc-rules/vm.yaml defines metric processing rules for the VM (virtual machine) monitoring scenario.

Step 3 – Install OpenTelemetry Collector Contrib and configure Prometheus receiver

extensions:
  health_check:
receivers:
  prometheus:
    config:
      scrape_configs:
      - job_name: 'vm-monitoring'  # must match VM rule filter
        scrape_interval: 10s
        static_configs:
        - targets: ['<nodeexporter-address>:9100']
          labels:
            job_name: 'vm-monitoring'  # add job_name label
processors:
  # No metric name conversion, keep node_ prefix
  # transform:  # commented out
resource:
  attributes:
    - key: service.name
      value: "vm::my-server"
      action: upsert
    - key: node_identifier_host_name
      value: "${HOSTNAME}"  # or a custom name
      action: upsert
    - key: layer
      value: "OS_LINUX"
      action: upsert
batch:
exporters:
  otlp:
    endpoint: "<skywalking-oap-address>:11800"
    tls:
      insecure: true
debug:
  verbosity: detailed
service:
  pipelines:
    metrics:
      receivers: [prometheus]
      processors: [resource, batch]  # transform removed
      exporters: [otlp, debug]

Step 4 – Run the collector and view results

Start the collector binary otelcol-contrib. After it connects to the SkyWalking OAP server, host metrics appear in the SkyWalking UI under the infrastructure section.