Set up Prometheus for comprehensive metric collection, storage, and monitoring of infrastructure and applications. Use when implementing metrics collection, setting up monitoring infrastructure, or configuring alerting systems.

name: prometheus-configuration description: Set up Prometheus for comprehensive metric collection, storage, and monitoring of infrastructure and applications. Use when implementing metrics collection, setting up monitoring infrastructure, or configuring alerting systems. ---

Prometheus Configuration

Complete guide to Prometheus setup, metric collection, scrape configuration, and recording rules.

Purpose

Configure Prometheus for comprehensive metric collection, alerting, and monitoring of infrastructure and applications.

When to Use

Set up Prometheus monitoring
Configure metric scraping
Create recording rules
Design alert rules
Implement service discovery

Detailed patterns and worked examples

Detailed pattern documentation lives in references/details.md. Read that file when the navigation tier above is insufficient.

Best Practices

Use consistent naming for metrics (prefix_name_unit)
Set appropriate scrape intervals (15-60s typical)
Use recording rules for expensive queries
Implement high availability (multiple Prometheus instances)
Configure retention based on storage capacity
Use relabeling for metric cleanup
Monitor Prometheus itself
Implement federation for large deployments
Use Thanos/Cortex for long-term storage
Document custom metrics

Troubleshooting

Check scrape targets:

curl http://localhost:9090/api/v1/targets

Check configuration:

curl http://localhost:9090/api/v1/status/config

Test query:

curl 'http://localhost:9090/api/v1/query?query=up'

Related Skills

grafana-dashboards - For visualization
slo-implementation - For SLO monitoring
distributed-tracing - For request tracing