Monitoring

Monitoring is a crucial aspect of managing applications deployed on The Box. It allows developers and administrators to keep track of application performance, resource usage, and overall health. The Box provides built-in monitoring tools that offer insights into various metrics, enabling proactive management and troubleshooting.

Built-in Monitoring Tools

The Box integrates Dozzle and dtop to provide real-time monitoring and logging capabilities.

Dozzle binds to 127.0.0.1 on the Docker host. Forward the port to your machine with SSH and open http://localhost:5000 in your web browser:

ssh -L 5000:127.0.0.1:8080 collaborator@<your-server>

The local port is yours to choose, and so is the destination spelling. The pinned SSH key permits 127.0.0.1:8080 and localhost:8080, exactly as written, so ssh -L 5000:localhost:8080 collaborator@<your-server> works too. Any other destination is refused with open failed: administratively prohibited.

SSH access to the server is the only authentication. Dozzle needs no additional login.

Dozzle has container actions and shell access enabled. You can start, stop, and restart containers, or open a shell, from the dropdown next to the container stats. Use these tools with care.

To access via shell, use the following commands:

dtop

The install script creates a .dtop.yml configuration file for your project with production and development contexts.

Application Monitoring

The Box provides only basic monitoring tools out of the box to help you assess your container health. For more advanced monitoring, logging, and alerting capabilities, consider integrating third-party services such as Sentry.

MCP Endpoint

Dozzle exposes a read-only MCP endpoint for AI coding assistants at /api/mcp. Forward the port as shown above, then add the server to your MCP client configuration:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "dozzle": {
      "type": "http",
      "url": "http://127.0.0.1:5000/api/mcp"
    }
  }
}

The tools are read-only. They list containers and hosts, and fetch or search container logs.