Setting Up a Docker Container for PMM Server

Simplified Automatic Installation
Manual Installation

A Docker image is a collection of preinstalled software which enables running a selected version of PMM Server on your computer. A Docker image is not run directly. You use it to create a Docker container for your PMM Server. When launched, the Docker container gives access to the whole functionality of PMM.

PMM Server deployment via Docker can be done either automatically with a special installation script, or manually. Both variants are covered in the following sections.

Simplified Automatic Installation

Automatic installation of the PMM Server is done with a special script, get-pmm.sh. This script should be downloaded and executed, for example with the following two commands:

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/percona/pmm/master/get-pmm.sh  -o get-pmm.sh
sh get-pmm.sh

This script should be executed under root user, or under non-root user either with rights to run docker containers, or with privileges to run sudo command.

Being executed, get-pmm.sh performs following actions:

checking if Docker is installed, and trying to install it if not,

running Docker if necessary,

downloading the PMM Server image,

generating the necessary pmm-data container,

configuring and starting the PMM Server container.

Manual Installation

The setup begins with pulling the required Docker image. Then, you proceed by creating a special container for persistent PMM data. The last step is creating and launching the PMM Server container.

Pulling the PMM Server Docker Image

To pull the latest version from Docker Hub:

$ docker pull percona/pmm-server:latest

This step is not required if you are running PMM Server for the first time. However, it ensures that if there is an older version of the image tagged with latest available locally, it will be replaced by the actual latest version.

Creating the pmm-data Container

To create a container for persistent PMM data, run the following command:

$ docker create \
   -v /opt/prometheus/data \
   -v /opt/consul-data \
   -v /var/lib/mysql \
   -v /var/lib/grafana \
   --name pmm-data \
   percona/pmm-server:latest /bin/true

Note

This container does not run, it simply exists to make sure you retain all PMM data when you upgrade to a newer PMM Server image. Do not remove or re-create this container, unless you intend to wipe out all PMM data and start over.

The previous command does the following:

The docker create command instructs the Docker daemon to create a container from an image.
The -v options initialize data volumes for the container.
The --name option assigns a custom name for the container that you can use to reference the container within a Docker network. In this case: pmm-data.
percona/pmm-server:latest is the name and version tag of the image to derive the container from.
/bin/true is the command that the container runs.

Important

Make sure that the data volumes that you initialize with the -v option match those given in the example. PMM Server expects that those directories are bind mounted exactly as demonstrated.

Creating and Launching the PMM Server Container

To create and launch PMM Server in one command, use docker run:

$ docker run -d \
   -p 80:80 \
   --volumes-from pmm-data \
   --name pmm-server \
   --restart always \
   percona/pmm-server:latest

This command does the following:

The docker run command runs a new container based on the percona/pmm-server:latest image.
The -d option starts the container in the background (detached mode).
The -p option maps the port for accessing the PMM Server web UI. For example, if port 80 is not available, you can map the landing page to port 8080 using -p 8080:80.
The -v option mounts volumes from the pmm-data container (see Creating the pmm-data Container).
The --name option assigns a custom name to the container that you can use to reference the container within the Docker network. In this case: pmm-server.
The --restart option defines the container’s restart policy. Setting it to always ensures that the Docker daemon will start the container on startup and restart it if the container exits.
percona/pmm-server:latest is the name and version tag of the image to derive the container from.

Installing and using specific docker version

To install specific PMM Server version instead of the latest one, just put desired version number after the colon. Also in this scenario it may be useful to prevent updating PMM Server via the web interface with the DISABLE_UPDATES docker option.

For example, installing version 1.14.1 with disabled update button in the web interface would look as follows:

$ docker create \
   -v /opt/prometheus/data \
   -v /opt/consul-data \
   -v /var/lib/mysql \
   -v /var/lib/grafana \
   --name pmm-data \
   percona/pmm-server:1.14.1 /bin/true

$ docker run -d \
   -p 80:80 \
   --volumes-from pmm-data \
   --name pmm-server \
   -e DISABLE_UPDATES=true \
   --restart always \
   percona/pmm-server:1.14.1

Additional options

When running the PMM Server, you may pass additional parameters to the docker run subcommand. All options that appear after the -e option are the additional parameters that modify the way how PMM Server operates.

The section PMM Server Additional Options lists all supported additional options.