Uptime Kuma Docker Compose 2024: Ultimate Non-Stop Monitoring

Nowadays, our lives are entirely connected:

• Online devices
• Sites
• Services
• Data
• ...

Knowing whether all these resources are accessible or not is of fundamental importance and in this Uptime Kuma Docker Compose guide we'll learn how to do it!

Uptime Kuma at a Glance

So, let's give a quick introduction to this tool, to answer this question:

What Is Uptime Kuma?

According to its creator, louislam:

Uptime Kuma is an easy-to-use self-hosted monitoring tool.

Ok, so?!

Well, many of you surely know sites used to check if a site/service is up or down, like:

• https://downdetector.com/
• https://downforeveryoneorjustme.com/
• https://down.com/
• And many others....

Uptime Kuma is the equivalent of these sites, BUT it can be configured in order to monitor what we want:

• The monitoring is not just limited to sites, but can be extended to other things.
• It's possible to set notifications with various services, just to name a few, like Telegram, Discord, Slack, email.
• We can create our customized dashboards that only show the monitors we've chosen.
• Monitors could be grouped or categorized to simplify the search.

If you want to take a look and try Uptime Kuma, to better understand if it fits your needing, here's the demo page.

What can we monitor with it?

Here's a temporary list of what is actually supported by Uptime Kuma:

• HTTP(s) sites
• TCP ports
• HTTP(s) Keyword
• HTTP(s) Json Query
• Ping
• DNS Record
• Push
• Steam Game Server
• Docker Containers
• Databases
• MQTT
• Radius
• GameDig

Install Uptime Kuma with Docker and Docker Compose

The configuration is quite simple, but before starting we need to make sure our environment is set up correctly.

Requirements

I highly recommend to follow the newest Anand's guides to configure everything from zero or to update your existing configurations, as in this tutorial I'll use the same configuration.

Here are the links for the guides:

• Install Docker on Ubuntu
• Install Docker on Ubuntu Server
• Install Docker Compose on Ubuntu
• Set Docker Environment (MOST IMPORTANT)

Deployarr can install 40+ Docker Apps in minutes, including Traefik, Authelia, Starr Apps, and more.

Uptime Kuma Docker Compose

As I told before the configuration is quite simple,
we only need to create a new yml file in the "compose" folder and paste the following code:

 
services:
  uptimeKuma:
    container_name: uptimeKuma
    image: louislam/uptime-kuma:latest
    restart: always
    networks:
      - socket_proxy
    volumes:
      - $DOCKERDIR/appdata/uptimeKuma/data:/app/data
    ports:
      - 3001:3001

Add Uptime Kuma to the Docker Stack

Save the file as uptime-kuma.yml and edit the master docker-compose.yml file to include the newly created file:

[...]

include: # Place the path of the file under the "include" section
  [...]
  - compose/UDMS/uptime-kuma.yml

Note, UDMS is the host name of machine based on Anand's guides. You could use your machine's hostname or even not separate your compose files by hosts, in which the path would be - compose/uptime-kuma.yml.

Start Uptime Kuma and Test

Now that we have added the Uptime Kuma docker compose to the main Docker Compose file, start it using the following command:

sudo docker compose -f /home/user/docker/docker-compose-udms.yml up -d uptimeKuma

Visit http://docker-host-ip:3001 to access Uptime Kuma web interface. Create the first user and continue.

Setting up Monitors

Everything is up and running, and now we can start to setup some monitors.

Containers Monitors

Before we start monitoring our containers, Docker Host must be configured, in order to allow Uptime Kuma to reach them.

Setup Docker Host Connection

Go to Settings, clicking on the User button on the top right page, and then on Settings:

Click on Docker Hosts, and Setup Docker Host:

Configure the connection:

If Docker Daemon is something new to you, here's something to clarify how it works and how it could allow communications between containers and Docker Host.

Click on Test to see if the configuration is working, and then Save.

Setup Containers Monitors

Click on the Add New Monitor button on the top left page:

From the Monitor Type drop-down menu, select Docker Container:

We can configure the monitor according to our needs, for example, if we don't need to know if a docker is UP or DOWN almost immediately, we can set the Heartbeat Interval to a higher value than 60 seconds, this is completely up to us!

Databases Monitors

For this monitor, I'm going to use a containerized MariaDB database, but we can of course use a not containerized one.

Setup Databases Monitors

Click on the Add New Monitor button on the top left page:

From the Monitor Type drop-down menu, select MySQL/MariaDB:

I have only reported the specific fields for this monitor, leaving out the generic ones that are the same for all (Friendly Name apart):

HTTP Monitors

There are various HTTP monitors:

• HTTP(s): to monitor sites and certifcates expiration
• HTTP(s) - Keyword: to search keyword in plain HTML or JSON response. The search is case-sensitive.
• HTTP(s) - Json Query: do a json Query against the response and check for expected value.
• HTTP(s) - Browser Engine BETA: Shows the picture of the page during the monitor checks, but it's still in Beta testing.

I'm going to show the HTTP(s) - Json Query as, in my opinion, it's the most interesting from a functional point of view, and because is the one I've used to realize my "Docker Host public IP change" monitor, but we'll discuss about this later.

Setup HTTP(s) - Json Query

Click on the Add New Monitor button on the top left page:

From the Monitor Type drop-down menu, select HTTP(s) - Json Query:

Even here, I have only reported the specific fields for this monitor, like I did before:

Other Monitors

We're going to see some monitors, that are very easy to set up, but at the same time very useful:

TCP Monitors

Need to keep an eye on a specific TCP port? Here's the monitor that will do the job.
The only field to configure, different from the others we've already seen, is the Port.

DNS Monitors

Monitor for DNS records:

Ping Monitors

Monitors that keep monitored the ping against a specific host/site/device/anything that has an IP address.
No new fields to report here!

Push Monitors

If we need to monitor something behind a firewall, or for some other reasons not directly reachable, we could implement a so called Passive Monitor Type. With this monitor we'll be provided an url, called Push URL, that needs to be called every X seconds, according to the value setted in the Heartbeat Interval field, from the thingh we want to monitor, otherwise it will be marked as DOWN.

Group Monitors

Groups are used to collect different monitors, improving dashboard ordering and clarity, especially if we have a lot of monitors.

With groups:

Without Groups:

No new fields to report here!

Telegram Notifications

With all these monitors, it would be nice to be notified when something happens, so what's better than some friendly Telegram notifications?

As I'm a great fan of Telegram, and I use it very often to receive notifications from NAS, IoT, docker, ... I've already explained how create and configure a bot to do so.
If you missed the tutorial, here's the link: Watchtower Docker Compose with Cool Notifications [2024]

After creating our bot, we need to access the Uptime Kuma notifications settings, and this could be done from the Settings page:

Here we can also see the settings for TLS Certificate Expiry present in the HTTP(s) monitors.

We can also access the notifications settings directly during the creation of a new monitor:

The Notification's setting page:

Click on Test, check your Telegram to see if the notification has arrived, and then Save.

Status Pages

Status pages make it possible to show pages with monitors status, without being logged, so accessible to basically anyone who knows the correct URL.

This is an example on how the Status Page looks like:

For every different status page, we can choose a different URL for its reaching.

Let's start the creation of our Status page by clicking on the Status Page button on the top right page:

Then click on New Status Page, select the name for the page and the slug referring to the page (E.g.: If you chose monitorpage as slug, the page will be reachable at http://:docker-host-ip:port/status/monitorpage)

Finally, we could select which monitors or groups to show in the page.

There are others options too, like theme selection, CSS, footer editing, and many more but I'm not going to cover them now, as they're not necessary to what we want to reach at the moment.

Other Features of Uptime-Kuma

2FA

If we plan to expose Uptime Kuma container to the internet, an extra layer of protections never hurts, so we'd better enable 2FA.

From Settings, click on Security and then 2FA Settings:

The classical QR code will be displayed, frame it with your favorite 2FA application, insert the generated code to verify and that's all!

API

Yes! There is an API too.

You can find the documentation here.

Just to give you an idea: I created an HTTP(s) - Json Query monitor that looks for an IP value, extracted from my Cloudflare DNS. When this value changes, the monitor is automatically updated with the new value.

The only limit is our own imagination!

Access Uptime Kuma

We have various options to access our dashboards or Uptime Kuma control panel:

• Port Forwarding
• Wireguard / VPN
• Reverse Proxy

Port Forwarding

The classic (and less secure) method, which consists in forwarding an external port of our router/modem/firewall/Internet facing device/..., directly to the corresponding port of the Uptime Kuma container's, on our Docker Host.

Wireguard/VPN

Safer than the previous method, we can access Uptime Kuma through Wireguard or any other VPN that you like.
You can find everything you need for Wireguard, that I highly recommend, here:

Other Posts in the Wireguard Series:

• Wireguard VPN Intro in 15 min: Amazing new VPN Protocol
• Complete Wireguard Setup in 20 min – Better Linux VPN Server
• Wireguard Windows Setup: Powerful VPN for Windows
• Wireguard Mac OS Client Setup – The sleek new VPN
• Wireguard Android Client Setup – Simple and Secure VPN
• Ultimate WireGuard Docker Compose: with CF and Traefik Support

Reverse Proxy

A good method that includes practicality, customization and security.
Traefik is our choice as reverse proxy, and its configuration is well detailed in these Anand's guide:

• v3: Ultimate Traefik v3 Docker Compose Guide: Best Reverse Proxy
• v2: Ultimate Traefik Docker Compose Guide: LE, SSL, Reverse Proxy

With this configuration, we can reach our Uptime Kuma dashboard or status pages through an address like https://uptime.ourdomain.org.
You can look at the Anand's configuration directly from his Github.

Bonus Track

Let's dive a little deep into HTTP(s)-Json Query monitors. As I said before, I built a monitor that looks for an IP value extracted from my Cloudflare DNS, so let's break it down to see how this works!

What we need

Final Thoughts

Uptime Kuma is definitely a good starting point to create our homemade monitoring system, implementing notifications and also status pages.

It allows us to create simple monitors with basic tasks like ping, resolving DNS, check sites certificates expiry, but also more complex tasks with databases, Json queries, and others.

We could also automate the monitor creation, based on Docker container labels, with AutoKuma.

In this guide I showed some of the monitors available in Uptime Kuma, to start getting familiar with it, but there are more.
Go play with it! Happy monitoring!