Monitoring / Metrics
Prometheus
An open-source monitoring system that collects, stores, and queries time-series metrics with a powerful label model.
Problem it solves
Why it exists.
It solves the lack of measurable signals needed to understand service health, capacity, and incidents.
Optimized for
Where it shines.
Cloud-native services that expose metrics and need alerting based on service-level behavior.
Use with care
Where not to use it.
Do not use it as a log store, distributed trace backend, or long-term archive without designing retention and federation deliberately.
Components
What it is made of.
- Exporter
- Scraper
- Time-series database
- PromQL
- Alertmanager
Process
How it works.
- Targets expose metrics endpoints
- Prometheus scrapes and labels samples
- PromQL queries the time series
- Rules evaluate signals and route alerts