Clear DefinitionsPrometheus
1 min read
Pronunciation
[proh-mee-thee-us]
Analogy
Like a central weather station collecting temperature and pressure readings from many sensors and allowing analysts to query trends over time.
Definition
An open‑source systems monitoring and alerting toolkit that scrapes numeric time‑series metrics from instrumented jobs, stores them in a TSDB, and provides a powerful query language (PromQL).
Key Points Intro
Prometheus powers observability with metric collection, storage, and alerting.
Key Points
Scraping: Pulls metrics over HTTP from instrumented endpoints.
TSDB: Efficient local storage of time‑series data.
PromQL: Flexible query language for aggregations and alerts.
Alertmanager: Handles alert routing, grouping, and silencing.
Example
A blockchain node exposes `/metrics`; Prometheus scrapes CPU, mempool size, and peer count every 15 s and fires alerts on high mempool backlog.
Technical Deep Dive
Prometheus uses a write‑optimized TSDB with chunks and WAL. Rules evaluate PromQL expressions periodically to generate alerts. Federation supports hierarchical scraping.
Caveat
High-cardinality metrics can degrade performance; limit label dimensions.
Prometheus - Related Articles
No related articles for this term.