How to Connect Docker

5 min read Integrations

Nova monitors your Docker containers automatically when the agent is installed on the host. You get container-level CPU, memory, network, and disk metrics, plus log collection from every container.

Steps

Install the Nova agent on the Docker host

If you have not already, install the Nova agent on the machine running Docker:

curl -sL https://install.novaaiops.com | sudo NOVA_API_KEY=YOUR_KEY bash

Enable Docker integration

The agent auto-detects Docker. Verify it is enabled in the agent config:

# /etc/nova-agent/nova-agent.yaml integrations: docker: enabled: true collect_container_logs: true collect_container_metrics: true

Alternatively, run Nova as a Docker container

If you prefer not to install the agent on the host, run it as a sidecar container:

docker run -d \ --name nova-agent \ -e NOVA_API_KEY=YOUR_KEY \ -v /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock:ro \ -v /proc:/host/proc:ro \ -v /sys:/host/sys:ro \ novaaiops/agent:latest

Tag containers for grouping

Add labels to your containers so Nova can group and filter them:

docker run -d \ --label nova.service=api \ --label nova.env=production \ my-api-image:latest

Tip:

For Docker Compose, add labels in your docker-compose.yml under each service's labels section. Nova uses these to auto-create service maps.

View container metrics

In Nova, go to Infrastructure > Containers. You will see every running container with live CPU, memory, and network stats. Click any container to drill into its metrics and logs.

Set up container alerts

Create alerts on container-specific metrics like restart count, memory limit percentage, or OOM kills. Go to Alerts > Create and select a Docker metric.

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