1.1 Introducing Prometheus and Grafana

Prometheus is an open-source, metrics-based monitoring system. It collects and stores its metrics as time-series data, i.e., metrics information is stored with the timestamp at which it was recorded, alongside optional key-value pairs called labels.

Numerical measures are referred to as metrics. Time series refers to data that documents changes over time. Depending on the application, users may want to measure different things. It could be the number of active connections or active queries for a database, or it could be the request timings for a web server.

Metrics collects data from services and hosts by sending HTTP requests on metrics endpoints. It then stores the results in a time-series database and makes it available for analysis and alerting.

Though Prometheus includes an expression browser that can be used for ad-hoc queries, the best tool available is Grafana. Grafana fully integrates with Prometheus and can produce a wide variety of dashboards.

Grafana is an open-source software (OSS) that enables you to query, visualize, alert on, and explore your metrics, logs, and traces wherever they are stored. Grafana OSS provides you with tools to turn your time-series data into insightful graphs and visualizations.

Prometheus and Grafana offer precompiled binaries for multiple platforms (such as various Linux distributions and Windows) along with Docker images.

This document provides detailed information on how to install Prometheus and Grafana on Filr 24.1 or on SLES15 SP4, monitor Filr Servers, various appliances and create dashboards.