Using Docker Compose¶

Prerequisite¶

• docker with the docker compose plugin.

• Python 3 with PyYAML (python3-yaml). Only Docker Compose needs Python; start-all.sh does not.

Generate the Compose File¶

Run make_compose.py from the monitoring directory, with the options you would pass to start-all.sh, for example:

./make_compose.py -d /path/to/prometheus/data -v 2025.3 -s prometheus/scylla_servers.yml

make_compose.py accepts every start-all.sh option (see The start-all.sh script), reads env.sh the same way, and rejects an option it cannot express in Docker Compose. It writes:

• docker-compose.yml, with one service per container start-all.sh runs, with the same container names, so kill-all.sh finds them.

• .env (0600), with the secrets only: the Grafana admin password, the Grafana renderer token and the Datadog API key.

• The Prometheus configuration, the Grafana data source and dashboard provisioning, and the Loki, Alloy or Promtail configuration.

Then start the stack:

docker compose up -d

Or let make_compose.py run it, with --compose:

./make_compose.py --compose -d /path/to/prometheus/data -v 2025.3

./start-all.sh --compose [options] does the same.

All the containers start in parallel, so the stack is up sooner than with start-all.sh.

Running make_compose.py again overwrites the generated files. Changing an option and running it again with --compose recreates only the containers whose definition or configuration files changed. Keep your changes in the options, not in the generated files.

Options¶

–compose Also run docker compose up -d --remove-orphans.

–traefik Add traefik, which serves the stack over TLS with mutual authentication. Set PRIVATE_IP (the address traefik listens on) and CERT_DIR (the directory with server.crt, server.key and rootCA.crt) in the environment. --traefik needs -A 127.0.0.1, so traefik is the only way in, and cannot be used with -l. With --compose, traefik starts after the rest of the stack, once start-traefik.sh --check finds no proxied port reachable outside loopback.

–stack id Run a secondary stack. Its Compose project is scylla-monitoring-stack<id>, written to docker-compose.stack<id>.yml and .env.stack<id>, so it does not replace the first one. Pass -f docker-compose.stack<id>.yml --env-file .env.stack<id> to docker compose to act on it.

-D and the per-container --limit, --volume and --param options are translated to Docker Compose settings, for example:

./make_compose.py --limit prometheus,--memory=8g --limit grafana,--cpus=1

Start and Stop¶

To stop the stack, run docker compose down (or ./kill-all.sh) in the monitoring directory. To start it again, run docker compose up -d.

The Configuration File¶

scylla_monitoring_config.py --compose applies a configuration file to a stack run with Docker Compose. See Configure the Stack from One File.