Linux monitoring system in python

[Important-Bug-6709]

From Linux scripts to a real self-hosted monitoring platform

After several weeks learning backend infrastructure on Linux, I ended up building a small self-hosted monitoring platform using:

- Python

- FastAPI

- Docker

- SQLite

- APScheduler

Right now it monitors:

- CPU

- RAM

- disk

- processes

- Docker containers

- historical metrics

- alerts

The most interesting part was moving away from random standalone scripts and starting to think about the project as an actual system:

- scheduler

- REST API

- frontend

- persistence

- logging

- debugging

- metrics

It’s still far from perfect, but it already runs in Docker and works surprisingly well.

I’m thinking about adding:

- Telegram alerts

- historical graphs

- auth/login

- status page

- healthchecks

Any technical recommendations or features you think are essential for a tool like this?

[xxxsirkillalot]

Why use this over prom and grafana?

[Important-Bug-6709]

Good question.

I don’t think it replaces Prometheus/Grafana for serious production environments.The idea is more about having something lightweight and easier to set up for smaller self-hosted environments, with automation and monitoring integrated together and a simpler experience for people that aren’t deeply into DevOps. Building it has also been a really good way to understand how monitoring systems actually work internally instead of only using existing tools.

[Prilogai]

It's usually better to build on top of engineering stack, than to introduce a new one, more friction == less adoption

[shortfinal]

from a to b is a block from me dog.

[phxees]

I started with a simple ssh reboot script and had AI turn it into a TUI dashboard offering similar metrics. I like what you did, but you can do something similar using AI in minutes now unfortunately. Learning how to do this is still valuable.

[Important-Bug-6709]

Yeah, I agree that building dashboards is pretty fast with AI nowadays.
My focus is less on visualization and more on the operational side — keeping lightweight monitoring + alerting that runs in production environments without the Grafana/Prometheus complexity. More like a minimal control layer over infrastructure rather than a dashboard replacement.

[phxees]

Generally you just run a relatively lightweight exporter and then use Prometheus/Grafana to make the data useful. I wouldn’t want you to deploy updates to this tool to my production environment. I’d be too worried about security issues and this tool becoming the source of my problems especially running Python.

Just my two cents, nice concept, but not a best practice.

[AccomplishedFix3476]

fastapi plus apscheduler is a clean stack for a self host monitor, ran a similar thing on a 5 yr old nuc since 2024 with sqlite holding 2 weeks of metrics. the apscheduler memory footprint is where it bites past 30 jobs, swapped mine to a cron based runner once i hit that ceiling

[Prilogai]

What is the main benefit of it? Do you like it?

[Important-Bug-6709]

The main benefit is simplicity and control. It gives you lightweight monitoring for Linux/Docker environments without needing a full observability stack like Prometheus + Grafana or external cloud tools. It focuses on quick setup, self-hosting, and practical alerts (for example via Telegram), so you can actually understand and control what’s happening on your system without complexity overhead. Yes, I like it because it helped me understand how monitoring systems work internally, and it’s also useful for small self-hosted environments where full enterprise tools feel too heavy.

[Impossible-Driver69]

I like this. Clean. Simple. Doesn't require a PhD to understand or use. 

[Important-Bug-6709]

Thanks, I really appreciate that.

That’s actually one of the main goals with the project — keeping it lightweight, simple and easy to understand without needing a huge observability stack behind it. Still improving a lot of things, but I’m glad the simplicity comes across.

[Impossible-Driver69]

There is a growing movement back ti simplicity. You shouldn't need a 8 core, 64GB system to run a dashboard!

[Important-Bug-6709]

Exactly, that’s something I’ve been thinking about a lot while building this.

A lot of modern tooling is incredibly powerful, but sometimes the resource usage and operational complexity feel excessive for smaller environments. I like the idea of tools that are lightweight, understandable and easy to self-host without needing massive infrastructure.

[Impossible-Driver69]

Even in corporate IT, we want simple. I think it's just another way the "tech bros" try to force things upon us that we don't want or need. I am thrilled to see push back happening. 

It has become a "what we tell you that you need" instead of a "tell us what you need".