node_exporter
Apache-2.0 official Prometheus host-metrics exporter
Observability / Metrics · Apache-2.0 · 13.9k
Reviewed 2026-10-17 · last push 2026-10-15 · repo checked 2026-10-19
What's Good
Apache-2.0 (prometheus/node_exporter), release v1.12.1, maintained since 2013. A single Go binary with pluggable collectors you can switch on or off with flags, packaged in EPEL, available as an Ansible role and as a container image. It is the data source behind most standard Linux host dashboards. ★~13.8k.
The Catch
It only exposes metrics: you still need a Prometheus server (or a compatible scraper) to store them and something like Grafana to view and alert on them. Running it in a container needs host networking, the host PID namespace and a read-only bind mount of / with --path.rootfs, or it ends up measuring the container instead of the machine. Windows needs the separate windows_exporter, and NVIDIA GPUs need dcgm-exporter.
Verdict
The first thing to install on any Linux box you want to watch with Prometheus.
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