NetData

What is NetData?

NetData is a real-time performance monitoring tool that needs essentially no configuration: point it at a host and it starts charting CPU, memory, disk I/O, network, and per-process metrics immediately in a web dashboard. Laradock runs it from the official netdata/netdata image with access to the host's /proc, /sys, and the Docker socket, so it can monitor the machine Docker itself is running on, not just the container.

Start NetData

docker compose up -d netdata

Stop NetData

docker compose stop netdata

To remove the container: docker compose rm -f netdata.

Configuration

All settings live in netdata/defaults.env and can be overridden by adding the same line to your own .env:

Variable	Default	What it does
NETDATA_PORT	19999	Host-side port the NetData dashboard is published on (container port 19999).

View the dashboard

Open http://localhost:19999. Charts update live, no setup or login required.

What it can see

netdata/compose.yml mounts the host's /proc and /sys read-only and adds the SYS_PTRACE capability, so NetData reports on the Docker host itself (all processes, all containers), not just its own container. It also mounts /var/run/docker.sock read-only to report per-container Docker stats.

Common issues

• Port already in use on your host. Change NETDATA_PORT in .env and restart: docker compose up -d netdata.
• Metrics look like they're for the whole machine, not just Laradock. That's expected, NetData mounts the host's /proc and /sys, so it reports on everything running on the Docker host, not a sandboxed view of just this project.
• Missing per-process detail. Some deeper process-level metrics need the SYS_PTRACE capability, already granted in netdata/compose.yml; if you're running a hardened Docker setup that strips capabilities globally, NetData's visibility will be reduced.

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Want application logs instead of host metrics? See Graylog. Want metrics with PromQL and dashboards? See Prometheus and Grafana. New to Laradock? Start with Getting Started.