Glances

Prerequisites

You need an active Azure subscription, an SSH key pair, and a VNet with a subnet in the target region.

Standard_B2s (2 vCPU / 4 GiB RAM) is ample for monitoring a single host.

Configure the network security group (NSG) to allow inbound 22/tcp from your management network and 80/tcp for the web dashboard. Glances serves plain HTTP on port 80. For production or shared access, terminate TLS in front of it with your own domain, using a reverse proxy or Azure Application Gateway.

Step 1 - Deploy from the Azure Marketplace

Sign in to the Azure Portal, choose Create a resource, search the Marketplace for Glances by SecureAnyCloud, and select Create.

On the Basics tab, pick your subscription, resource group, region and size. Under Administrator account, choose SSH public key and paste your key. Under Inbound port rules, allow SSH (22) and HTTP (80).

Select Review + create, then Create.

Step 2 - Deploy from the Azure CLI

# Accept the Marketplace terms once per subscription (required before the first CLI deploy)
az vm image terms accept --urn sac1647283583153:glances-ubuntu-24-04:default:latest
az vm create \
  --resource-group <your-rg> \
  --name glances \
  --image sac1647283583153:glances-ubuntu-24-04:default:latest \
  --size Standard_B2s \
  --admin-username azureuser \
  --ssh-key-values ~/.ssh/id_ed25519.pub \
  --vnet-name <your-vnet> --subnet <your-subnet> \
  --public-ip-sku Standard
az vm open-port --resource-group <your-rg> --name glances --port 80 --priority 1010

Step 3 - Connect to your VM

Connect over SSH as the azureuser admin user.

ssh azureuser@<vm-public-ip>

Step 4 - Confirm the services are running

Glances runs as glances-web.service on the loopback interface, fronted by nginx on port 80. A one-shot glances-firstboot.service runs once on first boot to generate the per-instance password.

Confirm that all three units are active. Also confirm that nginx listens on port 80 while Glances stays private on 127.0.0.1:61208:

sudo systemctl is-active nginx glances-web glances-firstboot
sudo ss -tlnp | grep -E ':80 |:61208 '

Expected output:

active active active LISTEN 0 2048 127.0.0.1:61208 0.0.0.0:* users:(("glances",pid=29912,fd=6)) LISTEN 0 511 0.0.0.0:80 0.0.0.0:* users:(("nginx",...)) LISTEN 0 511 [::]:80 [::]:* users:(("nginx",...))

Glances listens only on 127.0.0.1, so it is never reachable directly from the network. Every request goes through nginx on port 80.

Step 5 - Retrieve your per-instance credentials

HTTP Basic authentication protects the dashboard. The username is glances. The password is generated uniquely for this instance on first boot and stored in a root-only file. Read it with:

sudo cat /root/glances-info.txt

The file shows the access URL, the username and the per-instance password:

glances_url=http://<vm-ip>/ glances_username=glances glances_password=<your-unique-password>

Keep this password safe. It is unique to this VM, and no default password ships in the image.

Step 6 - Confirm the dashboard is secure by default

The /healthz endpoint used by load balancer probes is intentionally open and returns 200. The dashboard and the REST API require credentials, so an unauthenticated request to the API returns 401:

curl -s -o /dev/null -w '%{http_code}\n' http://127.0.0.1/healthz
curl -s -o /dev/null -w '%{http_code}\n' http://127.0.0.1/api/4/cpu

Expected output:

200 401

Supply the per-instance credentials to get live CPU statistics as JSON. Replace <glances-password> with the password from /root/glances-info.txt:

curl -s -u glances:<glances-password> http://127.0.0.1/api/4/cpu

An authenticated request returns the live CPU plugin:

{"total": 0.9, "user": 0.6, "system": 0.3, "idle": 99.0, "iowait": 0.1, "cpucore": 2, ...}

Step 7 - Confirm the version and query a live metric

Confirm the pinned Glances version and the health endpoint:

/opt/glances/venv/bin/glances --version curl -s -o /dev/null -w 'healthz HTTP %{http_code}\n' http://127.0.0.1/healthz

Expected output:

Glances version: 4.5.5 healthz HTTP 200

From your workstation, query the same authenticated API over the network. Use the VM's public IP to pull live memory metrics and the full metric set:

curl -s -u glances:<glances-password> http://<vm-ip>/api/4/mem
curl -s -u glances:<glances-password> http://<vm-ip>/api/4/all

The /api/4/ REST API exposes every metric the dashboard shows (cpu, mem, load, network, diskio, fs, processlist and more). Use it to feed Glances data into your own scripts, dashboards or alerting.

Step 8 - Open the web dashboard

In a browser, open http://<vm-public-ip>/ and sign in as glances with the per-instance password. The top of the dashboard shows the host, uptime and processor. Below it are live panels for CPU, memory, load, swap, network, disk input and output, and filesystems, plus a sortable list of running processes that refreshes in real time.

The process list sorts by CPU consumption, so the busiest processes rise to the top. When a workload starts, the CPU and load gauges climb and the responsible process appears at the head of the list.

The network and disk panels show live throughput. Read and write rates for each block device, and receive and transmit rates for each interface, update continuously alongside filesystem usage.

Everything on the dashboard is also available programmatically. The authenticated REST API returns the full set of live metrics as JSON, ready to consume from your own tools.

Enabling HTTPS for production

Glances serves plain HTTP on port 80 behind nginx. For production or shared access, put your own TLS certificate in front of it.

Point a DNS record at the VM's public IP. Then terminate TLS with Azure Application Gateway, or extend the nginx configuration in /etc/nginx/sites-available/sac-glances with a certbot-issued certificate for your domain. Once TLS is in place, restrict port 80 in the NSG to your Application Gateway or management network.

Support

Every SecureAnyCloud image includes 24/7 support, 365 days a year, by email and live chat with a 24-hour response SLA. Contact sales@secureanycloud.com with the product name and your Azure region and we will help.

Deploy on Azure

Launch Glances on Ubuntu 24.04 LTS on Azure with 24/7 support from SecureAnyCloud.

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Need Help?

Our support team is available 24/7.

sales@secureanycloud.com