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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

1

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
2

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
3

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
4

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.

5

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.

6

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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