Netdata — Real-Time Infrastructure Monitoring

Deploy Netdata on Railway with one click — the most energy-efficient, real-time infrastructure monitoring platform. Monitor every metric from every second across your entire infrastructure with zero configuration.

Features

• Real-time monitoring — per-second data collection and visualization
• Zero configuration — auto-discovers everything on the nodes it runs
• ML-powered anomaly detection — unsupervised machine learning on every metric
• 300+ integrations — monitors containers, databases, web servers, and more
• Interactive dashboards — rich, interactive charts without query languages
• Low resource usage — ~1% CPU on a modern server, ~0.5 bytes per sample
• Secure & distributed — no central data collection; your data stays on your infrastructure
• Netdata Cloud ready — optionally connect to Netdata Cloud for multi-node observability

Environment Variables

Architecture

┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│                    Railway Container              │
│                                                   │
│  ┌───────────────────────────────────────────┐   │
│  │            Netdata Agent v2.10.3           │   │
│  │                                             │   │
│  │  ┌─────────┐ ┌─────────┐ ┌─────────────┐  │   │
│  │  │ Metrics  │ │ Health  │ │ ML Detection│  │   │
│  │  │ Collector│ │ Alarms  │ │ & Anomalies │  │   │
│  │  └────┬────┘ └────┬────┘ └──────┬──────┘  │   │
│  │       │            │             │           │   │
│  │  ┌────▼────────────▼─────────────▼──────┐   │   │
│  │  │         Web Dashboard (Port 19999)     │   │   │
│  │  │   ┌──────────────────────────────┐     │   │   │
│  │  │   │  /api/v1/info  (Health Check)│     │   │   │
│  │  │   └──────────────────────────────┘     │   │   │
│  │  └──────────────────────────────────────┘   │   │
│  └───────────────────────────────────────────┘   │
│                                                   │
│  ┌───────────────────────────────────────────┐   │
│  │         Persistent Volume (Metrics)        │   │
│  │         /var/lib/netdata                   │   │
│  └───────────────────────────────────────────┘   │
└─────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

Netdata runs as a single container with a persistent volume for historical metrics data. The health check endpoint at /api/v1/info ensures Railway can monitor service availability.

Deploy and Host

About Hosting

Netdata runs as a single Docker container with a persistent volume for metrics history. It requires no external database, no message queue, and no sidecar services. The container auto-discovers all running services on the same node and begins collecting metrics immediately — CPU, memory, disk, network, containers, and 300+ other integrations — with zero configuration.

Railway provides automatic HTTPS, global CDN, health monitoring, and persistent volumes. The default health check at /api/v1/info ensures Railway can monitor service availability.

• Default Port: 19999 (configurable via NETDATA_PORT)
• Health Check: GET /api/v1/info — returns HTTP 200 when ready
• Startup Time: ~2 seconds (Netdata is extremely lightweight)
• Resource Usage: ~1% CPU, ~110MB RAM on a modern server

Health Endpoint

Railway uses the following endpoint for health checks:

• URL: /api/v1/info
• Timeout: 30 seconds
• Start period: 60 seconds (allows metric collectors to initialize)

Why Deploy Netdata on Railway?

With Railway, you get automatic HTTPS, global CDN, health monitoring, and scalable infrastructure — without managing servers.

Common Use Cases

• Server monitoring — Track CPU, memory, disk, and network across all your Railway services
• Container observability — See what's happening inside your containers with per-second granularity
• Anomaly detection — ML-powered alerts when metrics deviate from learned baselines
• Capacity planning — Historical dashboards to understand resource trends and growth patterns
• Incident response — Real-time dashboards during outages to identify root causes faster

Dependencies for Netdata

Deployment Dependencies

• Runtime: Netdata v2.10.3 (bundled in the container image)
• Storage: Persistent volume at /var/lib/netdata for historical metrics
• External access: Port 19999 (configurable) for the web dashboard and API
• Optional: Netdata Cloud claim token for multi-node observability (no account required for single-node use)

Getting Started

Deploy on Railway

1. Click the Deploy on Railway button above
2. Configure any environment variables (optional)
3. Click deploy
4. Access the Netdata dashboard at https://:19999

Local Development

# Build the Docker image
docker build -t railway-netdata .

# Run the container
docker run -d \
  --name netdata \
  -p 19999:19999 \
  -v netdata-data:/var/lib/netdata \
  railway-netdata

# Verify it's running
curl http://localhost:19999/api/v1/info

Troubleshooting

Health check failing? The startup period is 60 seconds. Netdata needs time to initialize metric collectors. If it persists, check logs: railway logs.

Port already in use? Change the NETDATA_PORT environment variable to an available port.

Not seeing metrics? Netdata auto-discovers services running on the same system. Ensure the services you want to monitor are running and network-accessible.

Volume not persisting? The /var/lib/netdata volume stores historical metrics. On Railway, volumes persist across redeploys but not across environments. Refer to Railway volumes documentation for details.

Updating Netdata

This template pins Netdata to version v2.10.3. To update:

1. Update the FROM line in Dockerfile to the desired version tag
2. Rebuild and redeploy

Check Netdata Releases for the latest version.

License

Netdata is GPL-3.0 licensed.

This Railway template is provided by INAPP-Mobile. Not affiliated with or endorsed by Netdata.