Introduction to Prometheus and Grafana

๐Ÿ“ˆ 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.


๐Ÿ” What is Prometheus?

Prometheus is an open-source metrics monitoring and alerting toolkit designed for reliability and scalability.


๐Ÿ”ง 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)


๐Ÿ“Š 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.


๐Ÿ“‰ 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.


๐Ÿ–ผ️ Key Features:

Customizable dashboards


Real-time visualizations


Supports multiple data sources (Prometheus, InfluxDB, MySQL, etc.)


Alerts and notifications


Role-based access control


๐Ÿงช 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.


๐Ÿ› ️ 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


๐Ÿง  Summary Table

Tool Purpose Key Feature

Prometheus Metrics collection & alerting Pulls metrics, stores time series

Grafana Data visualization Custom dashboards, real-time data


๐Ÿš€ 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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