Dang, that’s a lot of seperate parts for 1 “simple” task

Agree, but this setup allows for a lot of expansion and cuatomization. I’m sure there are simpler tools that tell you your computer status, and it’s up to you to see which fits more your use-case.

but just seems like there could be an easier way

I’ve felt that way before. But in this case of node-exporter and Prometheus, it’s way simpler. You don’t even need Docker, and the installation for both tools is basically a single line that you can copy and paste from their documentation.

Configuring Prometheus to accept node-exporter is a bit harder I admit, but again you can simply copy and paste the documentation example. The whole procesos takes like ~10 minutes if you follow the documentation.