Introduction to Prometheus and Grafana
๐ Introduction to Prometheus and Grafana
Modern systems generate a lot of data — about CPU usage, memory, errors, API latency, etc. Monitoring tools like Prometheus and Grafana help you:
Understand system performance
Detect issues early
Visualize trends over time
Alert when something goes wrong
Together, Prometheus + Grafana is a popular open-source stack for monitoring.
๐ What is Prometheus?
Prometheus is an open-source metrics monitoring and alerting toolkit designed for reliability and scalability.
๐ง Key Features:
Time-series database (stores data as metrics over time)
Pull-based architecture (Prometheus pulls metrics from targets)
Powerful query language: PromQL
Supports alerts via Alertmanager
Designed for cloud-native systems (like Kubernetes)
๐ What Does Prometheus Monitor?
CPU and memory usage
HTTP requests and errors
Database performance
Custom business metrics
Anything that can be measured and exposed as a metric can be monitored.
๐ What is Grafana?
Grafana is an open-source dashboard and visualization tool. It connects to Prometheus (and other data sources) to show metrics as beautiful graphs and charts.
๐ผ️ Key Features:
Customizable dashboards
Real-time visualizations
Supports multiple data sources (Prometheus, InfluxDB, MySQL, etc.)
Alerts and notifications
Role-based access control
๐งช How They Work Together
Prometheus collects metrics from your application or infrastructure.
It stores those metrics in its time-series database.
Grafana connects to Prometheus as a data source.
You create dashboards in Grafana to visualize those metrics.
Prometheus can also trigger alerts if thresholds are breached.
๐ ️ Simple Setup Overview
Prometheus:
Install Prometheus.
Configure targets in prometheus.yml (e.g., your app, node_exporter).
Run Prometheus and access it at http://localhost:9090.
Example target config:
yaml
Copy
Edit
scrape_configs:
- job_name: 'myapp'
static_configs:
- targets: ['localhost:8080']
Grafana:
Install Grafana.
Access Grafana at http://localhost:3000.
Add Prometheus as a data source.
Create dashboards with queries using PromQL.
⚠️ Real-World Use Cases
Monitor a web app’s response time and uptime
Track CPU and memory usage in Kubernetes clusters
Get alerts if disk space is running low
Visualize API request rates, error rates, and latency
๐ง Summary Table
Tool Purpose Key Feature
Prometheus Metrics collection & alerting Pulls metrics, stores time series
Grafana Data visualization Custom dashboards, real-time data
๐ Want to Learn More?
Let me know if you'd like:
A step-by-step installation guide
How to monitor a Node.js or Python app
How to create a Prometheus exporter
Setting up alerts in Prometheus & Grafana
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