🚀 Custom Alpine VM Image with Docker, Node.js, Prometheus, and Grafana

This guide walks through the process of creating a custom Alpine Linux VM image for x86_64 architecture, preconfigured with:

• Docker
• Node.js + NPM
• Prometheus
• Grafana
• Additional CLI tools (curl, wget, git, etc.)

🧰 Prerequisites

Ensure the following are installed in WSL or your Linux environment:

sudo apk add qemu-img qemu-nbd rsync sfdisk dosfstools curl wget git

Clone the alpine-make-vm-image tool:

curl -O https://raw.githubusercontent.com/alpinelinux/alpine-make-vm-image/master/alpine-make-vm-image

Now you should have a script named alpine-make-vm-image in your current directory. Make it executable:

chmod +x alpine-make-vm-image

🛠️ Create the VM Image

1. Create a Configuration Script

Create a file named configure.sh in the same directory as alpine-make-vm-image with the following content:

#!/bin/sh
set -ex

# Enable community repository
echo "https://dl-cdn.alpinelinux.org/alpine/latest-stable/community" >> /etc/apk/repositories
echo "https://dl-cdn.alpinelinux.org/alpine/edge/community" >> /etc/apk/repositories
echo "https://dl-cdn.alpinelinux.org/alpine/edge/testing" >> /etc/apk/repositories

# Update and install Docker
apk update

apk add docker grafana prometheus curl wget git vim bash openrc libc6-compat nodejs npm

# Create docker group if it doesn't exist
if ! getent group docker > /dev/null; then
    addgroup -S docker
fi

# Add root to docker group (if not already)
addgroup root docker || true

# Enable Docker service
rc-update add docker
rc-update add prometheus
rc-update add grafana

# -- Install Terraform manually --
TF_VERSION="1.6.6"
wget https://releases.hashicorp.com/terraform/${TF_VERSION}/terraform_${TF_VERSION}_linux_amd64.zip
unzip terraform_${TF_VERSION}_linux_amd64.zip -d /usr/local/bin/
rm terraform_${TF_VERSION}_linux_amd64.zip

# -- Install Node Exporter manually --
NODE_EXPORTER_VERSION="1.7.0"
wget https://github.com/prometheus/node_exporter/releases/download/v${NODE_EXPORTER_VERSION}/node_exporter-${NODE_EXPORTER_VERSION}.linux-amd64.tar.gz
tar -xzf node_exporter-${NODE_EXPORTER_VERSION}.linux-amd64.tar.gz
cp node_exporter-${NODE_EXPORTER_VERSION}.linux-amd64/node_exporter /usr/local/bin/
rm -rf node_exporter-${NODE_EXPORTER_VERSION}*

rc-update add loki || true

rm -rf /var/cache/apk/*

# Pull github repository and run it
# Define your repo URL
REPO_URL="https://github.com/amRohitKumar/grafana-express-server"
CLONE_DIR="/root/grafana-express-server"

# Clone the repo
if [ ! -d "$CLONE_DIR" ]; then
  echo "Cloning repository..."
  git clone "$REPO_URL" "$CLONE_DIR"
else
  echo "Repository already cloned."
fi

# Go into the repo
cd "$CLONE_DIR"

# Install packages
echo "Installing npm packages..."
npm install

2. Create the VM Image

Run the following command to create the VM image with the specified packages and configuration script:

sudo ./alpine-make-vm-image \
        --image-format qcow2 \
        --image-size 5G \
        --packages "curl wget git vim docker kubectl ansible prometheus grafana loki nodejs npm" \
        --script-chroot \
        custom-alpine.qcow2 \
        ./configure.sh

This command creates a VM image named custom-alpine.qcow2 with a size of 5GB, including the specified packages.

3. Run the VM Image

To run the VM image, you can use QEMU. Here’s an example command:

qemu-system-x86_64 \
  -m 2048 \
  -smp 4 \
  -enable-kvm \
  -cpu host \
  -net nic -net user,hostfwd=tcp::3000-:3000,hostfwd=tcp::9090-:9090\
  custom-alpine.qcow2

This command allocates 2GB of RAM and 4 CPU cores to the VM. It also forwards ports 3000 (for prometheus) and 9090 (for grafana) from the host to the VM, allowing access to Grafana and Prometheus.

4. Start Services

After the VM is running, you can start the services by executing the following commands inside the VM:

# Stop grafan-server if it is running
rc-service grafana stop

# Start grafana-server with custom config
grafana-server --config=/usr/share/grafana/conf/defaults.ini --homepath=/usr/share/grafana > /usr/share/grafana/data/grafana.log 2>&1 &

# Check if grafana-server is running
jobs -l

# Start express server
cd /root/grafana-express-server && npm run start

# Check if express server is running
curl http://localhost:8080

# Configure prometheus to use our express server as a target
vim /etc/prometheus/prometheus.yml

# Update the target inside static_configs, finally it should look like this:
# static_configs:
#    - targets: ['localhost:8080']

5. Accessing the Services

• Grafana: Open your browser and go to http://localhost:3000. The default username and password are both admin. Use dashboard ID 11159 to create node dashboard.
• Prometheus: Open your browser and go to http://localhost:9090.
• Express Server: Open your browser and go to http://localhost:8080 (on virtual machine).

6. Prometheus Visualization

• To visualize the metrics, you can go to http://localhost:9090/targets and check if the target is up.

7. Grafana Visualization

• To visualize the metrics in Grafana, start with adding a new data source. Choose Prometheus as the data source type and set the URL to http://localhost:9090.
• After adding the data source, you can create a new dashboard and add panels to visualize the metrics collected by Prometheus. Select import from the dashboard ID 11159 to create a node dashboard.
• You can also create custom queries to visualize specific metrics. For example, to visualize CPU usage, you can use the following query:

8. Stopping the VM

To stop the VM, you can use the following command:

# run this command inside the VM
poweroff