What is Prometheus?
An open source system that collects and stores metrics from your services.
In plain English
Prometheus regularly scrapes numbers (metrics) from the endpoints of your applications and servers and stores them as time series. You query them with PromQL and can set alerts. It is a core monitoring tool in the Kubernetes and cloud native world.
Example
Prometheus records how many requests per second a service handles, so you can alert when errors rise.
Easy to confuse with
- Grafana: Prometheus collects and stores metrics. Grafana draws them as dashboards.
Where you will meet it
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Related terms
- PromQL: The query language used to read and calculate on Prometheus metrics.
- Grafana: A tool for turning metrics, logs and traces into dashboards and alerts.
- Metrics, logs and traces: The three main kinds of telemetry: numbers over time, event records, and the path of a single request.
Quick answers
What is Prometheus?
An open source system that collects and stores metrics from your services.
What is the difference between Prometheus and Grafana?
Prometheus collects and stores metrics. Grafana draws them as dashboards.
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