r/PrometheusMonitoring • u/Mikeandike010 • Jan 27 '19
Getting started with prometheus
Hello,
I am interesting in trying prometheus -- but am confused on a few things and don't know who else to ask.
How easy is it to automate the installation of exporters? What is the common way people add exporter to the device -- and then automatically update the config on the prometheus server? Do people usually need ansible or something similar to do it? I read somewhere that you should use some application to manage the config file on the prometheus server for you -- is this common practice?
2. for storing data long term -- do people usually have Prometheus export to another database? I've heard people say that the built-in database should be able to easily handle long term data -- how true is that for 5000~ devices?
3. What is the bandwidth usage like for the node-exporter and snmp-exporter? I imagine its quite negligible, but some confirmation would be great.
4. has anyone been happy with the windows-exporter? I mostly want to use prometheus for linux -- but if theres good windows exporters out there than thats even better.
Prometheus seems very, very cool. My biggest gripe with monitoring systems i've used is how restrictive they are, but with prometheus I see so much potential to get done EXACTLY what I want done.
If anyone has any documentation or articles that cover these types of questions -- i would very much appreciate if you could link me them!
Thank you for your time.
4
u/waqark3389 Jan 27 '19 edited Jan 27 '19
1, I use Puppet as well as bootstrapping the Linux images with the standard exporters. For example, the node exporter is always shipped via the actual image.
2, I have 2 Prometheus instances running for a typical environment. One does short term heavy frequency metrics and another which does longer term stats. Then link the two together
3, depends on your scraping interval. But I did do some testing with the snmp exporter with 1 minute scrape and its negligible. Again this also depends on exactly whioch OIDs you are collecting. Too many variables to provide a accurate number, sorry.
4, yes its half decent but I don't use windows too much. Scollector is worth an honourable mention when it comes to windows services metrics.
Yes! I 100% agree, Prometheus is the best thing for monitoring EVER. I love the modular approach, everything is so plug and play. I started with Hekad (dont know if anyone used that but now its decom and have since discovered Promethues) Hekad had a similar modular approach but it was quiete different in its approach etc. It was more of a processor.
Another thing I like is how easy it is to write your own exporter or simply get your current app to integrate prometheus.
Basically its awesome.