DockProbe: Lightweight Docker Monitoring with Anomaly Detection & Telegram Alerts

dohelper — Mon, 02 Mar 2026 00:16:55 +0000

Are you flying blind with your Docker containers? One command changes that.

I built DockProbe — a lightweight, self-hosted Docker monitoring dashboard that gives you full visibility into your containers with zero configuration.

What is DockProbe?

DockProbe runs as a single Docker container and collects real-time CPU, memory, network, and disk metrics from all your containers and the host machine. Everything is displayed in a clean, dark-themed web UI that auto-refreshes every 10 seconds.

No agents to install. No external database. No complex setup. Just mount the Docker socket, run one command, and you're done.

Key Features

📊 Real-time Dashboard — Dark-themed UI with sortable tables and Chart.js charts
🔍 Container Monitoring — CPU %, memory %, network I/O, block I/O, restart count
🌡️ Host Monitoring — CPU/GPU temperature, disk usage, load average
🚨 Anomaly Detection — 6 built-in rules: CPU spike, memory overflow, high temp, disk full, unexpected restart, network surge
📱 Telegram Alerts — Instant notifications with 30-minute cooldown per alert type
🔒 Security — Basic Auth, rate limiting, HTTPS (self-signed or Cloudflare Tunnel)
⚡ Lightweight — Only 4 Python packages, SQLite with 7-day retention

Quick Start

git clone https://github.com/deep-on/dockprobe.git && cd dockprobe && bash install.sh

That's it. The interactive installer sets up authentication, Telegram alerts, and HTTPS in under a minute.

Requirements: Docker (with Compose v2), Git, OpenSSL

Anomaly Detection

DockProbe watches your containers 24/7 and alerts you before users notice:

Rule	Condition
Container CPU	>80% for 3 consecutive checks
Container Memory	>90% of limit
Host CPU Temp	>85°C
Host Disk	>90% usage
Container Restart	restart_count increased
Network Spike	RX 10x surge + >100MB

All thresholds are configurable via environment variables.

Access Modes

Local Network — Self-signed SSL, access via https://localhost:9090
Remote Access — Port forwarding option
Cloudflare Tunnel — Recommended for remote access, no port-forwarding needed, proper TLS certificate

Why I Built This

Existing Docker monitoring solutions are either too heavy (Prometheus + Grafana stack) or too simple (just showing container status). I wanted something in between — lightweight enough to run on a home server, but smart enough to catch problems automatically and ping me on Telegram.

DockProbe is the result: 4 Python dependencies, a single HTML file for the UI, and SQLite for storage. It stays out of your way until something goes wrong.

Try It Out

🔗 GitHub: https://github.com/deep-on/dockprobe

Feedback, issues, and PRs are welcome! If you find it useful, a ⭐ on GitHub goes a long way.

Built by DeepOn Inc.

How I Built a Docker Monitoring Dashboard in a Single Container

dohelper — Sun, 01 Mar 2026 13:28:03 +0000

The Problem

I run about 10 Docker containers on a home server. Nothing crazy — nginx, postgres, redis, a few web apps. I wanted a simple way to check if everything was healthy.

The obvious answer was Prometheus + Grafana. But for my use case, it felt like bringing a firetruck to blow out a candle:

Prometheus: separate container, config files, scrape targets, retention policies
Grafana: another container, dashboards to build, data sources to configure
Node Exporter: yet another container for host metrics
cAdvisor: and another one for container metrics

That's 4 extra containers just to monitor 10 containers. Something felt wrong.

The Idea

What if monitoring was just... one container? Mount the Docker socket, open a browser, done.

That's what I built. It's called DockProbe.

Architecture Decisions

Why FastAPI?

I needed async because Docker stats streaming is inherently async. FastAPI with uvicorn gave me:

Async Docker API calls via aiodocker
Built-in OpenAPI docs (useful during development)
Single-process, low memory footprint

Why SQLite?

For a monitoring tool with 7-day retention, SQLite in WAL mode is perfect:

No separate database container
Handles the write pattern well (one insert every 10 seconds)
Named volume for persistence across container restarts

Why a Single HTML File?

Zero build step. No npm, no webpack, no node_modules. The entire dashboard is one HTML file with inline CSS and JavaScript. Chart.js is loaded from CDN. This means:

docker compose up -d and you're done
No frontend build pipeline to maintain
Easy to customize — it's just one file

Anomaly Detection

Instead of just showing numbers, DockProbe watches for problems. Six rules run on every collection cycle (10 seconds):

# CPU: must be high for 3 consecutive checks (30 seconds)
# This avoids false alarms from brief spikes
if cpu_pct > CPU_THRESHOLD:
    cpu_counts[container] += 1
    if cpu_counts[container] >= 3:
        trigger_alert("cpu_high", container, cpu_pct)
else:
    cpu_counts[container] = 0

Each alert type has a 30-minute cooldown per target, so you won't get spammed if a container is consistently misbehaving. Alerts go to Telegram via a simple httpx POST — no email server, no Slack webhook setup.

The Result

4 Python packages: fastapi, uvicorn, aiodocker, httpx
~50MB memory usage
10-second collection interval
7-day data retention
One command to install

git clone https://github.com/deep-on/dockprobe.git && cd dockprobe && bash install.sh

What I Learned

aiodocker's stats API returns different formats depending on stream=True vs stream=False. Cost me hours of debugging.
Self-signed HTTPS is important even for local tools — browsers increasingly block HTTP features.
Single-file dashboards are underrated. No build step means no build breakage.

What's Next

I'm considering:

Container log viewer
Custom alert thresholds per container
Multi-host support
Webhook integrations beyond Telegram

GitHub: https://github.com/deep-on/dockprobe

If you're running Docker containers and want simple monitoring without the Prometheus/Grafana overhead, give it a try. Feedback and stars are very welcome!

DEV Community: dohelper

DockProbe: Lightweight Docker Monitoring with Anomaly Detection & Telegram Alerts

What is DockProbe?

Key Features

Quick Start

Anomaly Detection

Access Modes

Why I Built This

Try It Out

How I Built a Docker Monitoring Dashboard in a Single Container

The Problem

The Idea

Architecture Decisions

Why FastAPI?

Why SQLite?

Why a Single HTML File?

Anomaly Detection

The Result

What I Learned

What's Next