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Ankeet Chauhan - PeerSpot reviewer
DevOps Engineer at Bipolar Factory
Real User
Top 5
Offers great alerting features along with an open-source version
Pros and Cons
  • "Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten."
  • "The UI and GUI are areas of concern in the product."

What is our primary use case?

For a project I am currently working on in my company, I use Grafana, but for the data source part, I use Prometheus.

I use Prometheus in a Kubernetes cluster. I use Prometheus for the processes attached to Amazon EKS.

What needs improvement?

The UI and GUI are areas of concern in the product. The UI part of the tool should be more friendly. More GUI should be added to the solution. The UI and GUI should look good.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Prometheus for a year. I am a customer of the tool.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten.

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What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

I haven't faced any scalability issues in the product. Scalability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten.

Around five to ten DevOps engineers use the product. Other employees in the company don't use the solution because it is a product that is used to monitor other clusters. The DevOps team uses the product to monitor clusters.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

I use Prometheus and Grafana.

I used to use Amazon CloudWatch as an in-built proprietary monitoring and alerting tool in my company. Amazon CloudWatch's use had a certain cost attached to it, but Prometheus is an open-source tool.

How was the initial setup?

The product's initial setup phase was easy.

The solution is deployed on the cloud.

The solution can be deployed in three to five minutes.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

Prometheus is an open-source tool.

What other advice do I have?

Speaking about how I have implemented the product for my company's infrastructure, I would say that I have a simple Prometheus in my cluster, which is Amazon EKS' cluster using a Helm Chart. Helm Chart is a package manager for Kubernetes-based applications. I have installed Prometheus and Grafana using Helm Chats, which is very easy to install.

In terms of the benefits of the tool attached to the performance monitoring part, I use Prometheus as a data source. Prometheus helps me to pull my Kubernetes cluster data. Basically, Prometheus helps me as it serves as a one-stop destination for my Kubernetes cluster data. I export data from Prometheus to Grafana, which helps me with the visualization part. In general, Prometheus helps me visualize my data and gives me a structure for my clusters.

I would say that I use Grafana for the alerting feature that helps maintain system reliability. I use Prometheus for my data sources and by adding it. From the data, I create email alerts. The first point of contact for me is Prometheus for Grafana's dashboard and for each and every alerting feature as well. I can say that Prometheus is very useful for me if I consider its alerting features.

I have only used Prometheus to monitor my Amazon EC2 servers and Amazon EKS clusters. My use cases indicate that I have been using Prometheus to monitor Amazon EC2 server and Amazon EKS clusters. I don't use the product extensively for anything else apart from the fact that I use it to monitor Amazon EC2 server and Amazon EKS clusters.

I recommend the product to those who plan to use it.

I would like to mention that if you use Prometheus and if you integrate it into other tools, then it will save a lot of costs as it is a free and open-source product with a strong community. Prometheus will be getting an updated version soon, which is very soon.

I rate the tool an eight out of ten.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Platform Engineer at Clarinox Technologies
Real User
Top 20
Efficiently handles large amounts of metrics
Pros and Cons
  • "The most valuable features of Prometheus for metrics collection and monitoring are its stability, robustness, and rich set of features."
  • "One potential area for improvement would be fixing the occasional glitches and bugs."

What is our primary use case?

I use Prometheus to monitor my infrastructure and applications by setting up targets for scraping metrics, writing queries in PromQL to analyze the data, and configuring alerts to notify me of any issues. It is great because it can efficiently handle large amounts of metrics.

How has it helped my organization?

Prometheus has been incredibly helpful in improving my system's observability and alerting processes. It provides metrics for monitoring various aspects of my infrastructure and applications, helping me identify issues quickly.

What is most valuable?

The most valuable features of Prometheus for metrics collection and monitoring are its stability, robustness, and rich set of features. Being an open-source product, it offers reliability and flexibility, and if something is missing, it is easy to extend its functionality through integrations or custom solutions.

What needs improvement?

While Prometheus is an excellent product overall, one potential area for improvement would be fixing the occasional glitches and bugs.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Prometheus for almost seven years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

I'm generally happy with Prometheus's stability. Although there might be occasional glitches, we usually address them swiftly by reporting issues. Over the past year, we have seen improvements in memory usage.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

When we need to scale Prometheus, we do that by using specific products. Considering its purpose, it is fairly scalable. About 1,000 users within our company use Prometheus for monitoring and alerts.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup was very simple and deployment only took us about 15 seconds. Maintaining Prometheus is just a regular part of our responsibilities, like managing any other system in our infrastructure. It doesn't demand extra effort or special attention beyond our usual routine tasks.

What other advice do I have?

Integrating Prometheus with our existing systems and tools was easy. We seamlessly connected it with VCS, Grafana for visualization, and Slack for notifications, making management and monitoring straightforward.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
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January 2025
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Renu Saini - PeerSpot reviewer
DevOps Engineer at Suse
Real User
Top 5
Used to monitor the health of multiple servers, including their uptime and CPU memory usage
Pros and Cons
  • "The most valuable feature of Prometheus is the ease of pulling the metrics."
  • "The solution's error handling part could be improved."

What is our primary use case?

We use Prometheus to monitor the health of more than 300 to 400 servers, including their uptime, CPU memory usage, and iowait.

What is most valuable?

The most valuable feature of Prometheus is the ease of pulling the metrics.

What needs improvement?

The solution's error handling part could be improved. The errors that are sometimes shown are not accurate enough to debug. The code base can be improved so that the debugging part is easy if Prometheus is not working. The error should be so that the user can easily understand where the issue could be, and it would become easy to debug.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Prometheus for one year.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

We had issues with the solution's stability regarding SSL certificates around a year back, but now it's stable.

I rate the solution an eight out of ten for stability.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Whenever a new region comes up on any of the clouds, like Azure, Google, or AWS, we need to add Prometheus servers over there, and the metrics need to be pulled from those new servers. Every month, we increase the number of servers where Prometheus is used. We did not find any challenges, and we are able to view the metrics.

I rate the solution a nine out of ten for scalability.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

I joined my current company around one and a half years ago. Since that time, we have been using Prometheus. In my previous organization, we used a separate stack for monitoring solutions, including an open-source solution called Telegraf.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup of the solution is easy because it has pretty good documentation.

What about the implementation team?

We were able to deploy Prometheus, Grafana, and Loki, and we were able to pull the metrics from more than 300 servers in one week.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

Prometheus is an open-source solution.

What other advice do I have?

I would recommend Prometheus to other users. If you have to monitor the health of multiple servers, just write an Ansible playbook or a Salt state, and the ease of deployment of Prometheus to any number of services is really easy. We are also using SSL certificates with the solution. With Prometheus, you will not face any security issues. It's a great monitoring solution for pulling the metrics.

Overall, I rate the solution a nine out of ten.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Public Cloud

If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?

Amazon Web Services (AWS)
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Information Technology Manager at Peponi Schools
Real User
Top 5
Easy to maintain, but it needs to improve the ability to generate customized reports
Pros and Cons
  • "The product is easy to maintain."
  • "The query language in Prometheus is an area of concern where improvements are required."

What is our primary use case?

In Prometheus, the graphs and everything are too complicated. With Prometheus, you need to sit down and study it properly. Though the product offers a pretty interface, if you don't know what you are doing, then the tool doesn't provide you with customized reports. The product sends its users email reports, which they need to look into.

What needs improvement?

The query language in Prometheus is an area of concern where improvements are required.

The ability to generate customized reports should be made available in the product.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Prometheus for three years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Once the product is properly configured and installed, it works perfectly.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

It is a scalable solution.

Around 600 people in my company use the product.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

I have experience with Sophos. There are some problems with the GUI of Prometheus. The GUI of Sophos is simple and easy to use.

I would recommend others to choose Zabbix over Prometheus.

I rate Zabbix a nine out of ten.

How was the initial setup?

The product's initial setup phase is not easy as one needs to know the Unix language.

Considering that there is a need to update and upgrade the Linux part, the solution can be deployed in an hour. It may take a day for someone who does not know the product's installation phase.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

Prometheus is available as an open-source product.

What other advice do I have?

Prometheus for monitoring our company's infrastructure and applications is useful, as it serves as a network monitoring tool that helps you understand the bandwidth capabilities while also ensuring that you get to know who is accessing what at what time of the day. The tool provides details on where the company's network bandwidth is used.

Speaking about how Prometheus has helped in our company's system observability and alerting processes, I think it's just an added tool in our environment because we don't use it as a primary solution. Primarily, my company is dependent on Sophos. The other solutions probably don't give you the results you want, but it all depends on how well you have done your policies. The aforementioned reason may prompt a user to use Prometheus.

Features of Prometheus for metrics collection and monitoring stem from the ability that the product provides to track bandwidth.

It is a task to deal with Prometheus' query language because it is not as clear as you would expect it to be, which poses a challenge.

The integration of Prometheus with Zabbix can be a nightmare, and it can be quite challenging. There are also chances that you may get errors when trying to integrate Prometheus with Zabbix. You have to wait for the next release of Prometheus and Zabbix to be able to install them together.

The product is easy to maintain.

The product works fine in terms of its abilities related to incident detection and resolution, but the product has to do something with the GUI part, which is not appealing enough as someone would not want to sit in front of it and look at graphs.

Those planning to use Prometheus should be aware of the syntax part in programming before using it.

I rate the overall tool a seven out of ten.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Prajwal Kabbinale - PeerSpot reviewer
Software Engineer at a retailer with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Top 5
Plenty of functions, highly scalable, and helps understand application behavior
Pros and Cons
  • "The most valuable features of Prometheus are the many functions available. The functions are helpful for understanding the behavior of applications and infrastructure."
  • "A slight alteration to the user interface should be made to increase efficiency and streamline the process. Currently, we are utilizing Prometheus to gather and compile metrics and then utilizing Grafana to display them in the form of a graph. However, I believe that Prometheus has the capability to handle both of these tasks on its own, with perhaps the addition of a supplementary plugin. By doing so, the need for utilizing two separate applications will be eliminated."

What is our primary use case?

In order to have a visuality from Grafana, we create the metrics using Prometheus. Prometheus pushes all these metrics to Grafana. After scraping all the metrics and plotting them on a graph using Grafana, then we used Prometheus as middleware for getting all the metrics from all our applications and infrastructure.

How has it helped my organization?

We use Prometheus with Grafana and without either of them, it would not fit our use case.

What is most valuable?

The most valuable features of Prometheus are the many functions available. The functions are helpful for understanding the behavior of applications and infrastructure.

What needs improvement?

A slight alteration to the user interface should be made to increase efficiency and streamline the process. Currently, we are utilizing Prometheus to gather and compile metrics and then utilizing Grafana to display them in the form of a graph. However, I believe that Prometheus has the capability to handle both of these tasks on its own, with perhaps the addition of a supplementary plugin. By doing so, the need for utilizing two separate applications will be eliminated.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Prometheus for a couple of years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

We have experienced some performance issues, but I cannot say for certain whether it is due to Prometheus or if it is a result of our infrastructure. During these instances, we have noticed that the mix of metrics can become disrupted for a period of time due to high levels of CPU utilization or other factors. As a result, we are unable to retrieve metrics during these instances. This has been a challenge that I have faced while using Prometheus. It is unclear whether there is a solution, such as a resource optimization, that could help to alleviate these issues. However, it is expected that the utilization of resources should improve as the number of metrics that we scrape increases.

I rate Prometheus an eight out of ten.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

I rate the scalability of Prometheus a ten out of ten.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup should be relatively uncomplicated. I haven't personally dealt with the implementation aspect but based on my previous experiences, we utilized Prometheus and Grafana together in our Kubernetes cluster. Thus, we were able to deploy it with ease, all within one unified operation.

What about the implementation team?

We did the implementation of the solution in-house.

What was our ROI?

We have received a return on investment using Prometheus.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

The solution is open source.

What other advice do I have?

Prometheus, similar to Grafana, is incredibly useful and effective, particularly when you become more familiar with its functions and capabilities. By developing a stronger understanding of the functions utilized by Prometheus, it becomes much easier to extract relevant metrics and create visually appealing graphs. Thus, it is recommended that users invest time in learning and mastering these functions for optimal results.

I rate Prometheus an eight out of ten.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Jorge Florez - PeerSpot reviewer
Head SRE Latam at PayU
Real User
Top 20Leaderboard
A great many integrations; industry standard for metrics
Pros and Cons
  • "The feature I found most valuable is the number of integrations. It is the industry standard for metrics."
  • "If you are not quite technical, it can be pretty hard to understand the way it works and how to query data in Prometheus."

What is our primary use case?

Our primary use case for Prometheus is collecting metrics.

What is most valuable?

The feature I found most valuable is the number of integrations. It is the industry standard for metrics.

What needs improvement?

If you are not quite technical, it can be pretty hard to understand the way it works and how to query data in Prometheus.

In the next release, I'd like to see a more user-friendly interface where you can have more options on the graphical interface and more integrations that can help with the scalability.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Prometheus for about five years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

I would rate the stability of Prometheus a nine, on a scale from one to 10, with one being the worst and 10 being the best.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

I would rate the scalability of this solution a five, on a scale from one to 10, with one being the worst and 10 being the best.

In case you want to make it more scalable, you can add other open-source projects like Thanos that can integrate with Prometheus.

How are customer service and support?

I have not contacted technical support because there is none. The community is the technical support.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup of Prometheus was easy.

The deployment time mostly depends on the desired use case for Prometheus.
For example, monitoring a couple of servers would take about one hour to deploy. On the other hand, if you are planning to deploy several clusters or Kubernetes and other managed services, that adds complexity, and then deployment takes days or even weeks.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

The reason we didn't go with, for example, AWS X-ray, Azure Monitor, or AppDynamics is that we didn't want to be tied to a specific provider.

What other advice do I have?

I would advise others that before buying this solution they make a good design and think about their use case because the metrics can scale rapidly as can the amount of data you ingest. Without a good design, that might not be possible.

Overall, I would rate the Prometheus solution a nine, on a scale from one to 10, with one being the worst and 10 being the best. The reason for this is because it's open source, so there are no fees. There are no licenses to pay for and it has a great community. 

Prometheus became the standard of the industry for metrics as you can find a lot of documentation, forums, and many answers to any questions online. Also, Prometheus has constant updates to improve applications and to fix either the box or the issues. The ability to integrate with a wide range of other applications makes this solution even better.

We have Prometheus deployed in both the public cloud and on-premises.

There are about 100 users of Prometheus in our company.

If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?

Amazon Web Services (AWS)
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer:
PeerSpot user
Shams Ur Rehman - PeerSpot reviewer
DevOps II Engineer at EMumba
Real User
Top 5
An open-source solution that has rich documentation and good Slack community support
Pros and Cons
  • "Prometheus is an open-source product that helps mold and improve it per our requirements. It is a lightweight solution that gives you many different metrics you can use in your application. The product offers complete granularity of your infrastructure. It integrates seamlessly with other tools like Grafana, which offers dashboard visibility. Prometheus is an extensively used product. I haven't seen any organization that is not using it."
  • "Prometheus can be initially difficult for users since it has its query language, PromQL. The minimalistic interface is complicated to understand. They need to improve their interface so that users who don't know PromQL can also use it. You can only leverage the tool when you know PromQL."

What is our primary use case?

We use the solution to understand different metrics: RAM usage, CPU usage, application utilization, application performance, container metrics, port metrics, and network metrics.

What is most valuable?

Prometheus is an open-source product that helps mold and improve it per our requirements. It is a lightweight solution that gives you many different metrics you can use in your application. The product offers complete granularity of your infrastructure. 

It integrates seamlessly with other tools like Grafana, which offers dashboard visibility. Prometheus is an extensively used product. I haven't seen any organization that is not using it. 

What needs improvement?

Prometheus can be initially difficult for users since it has its query language, PromQL. The minimalistic interface is complicated to understand. They need to improve their interface so that users who don't know PromQL can also use it. You can only leverage the tool when you know PromQL. 

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using the product for a year. 

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Prometheus is very stable. 

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

The solution is lightweight, and you can scale it however you want. It is used mainly by our DevOps team, which consists of 10-20 people. 

How are customer service and support?

We haven't contacted the tech support team yet. The tool has rich documentation and a good Slack community. It is a mature tool, and there are a lot of people who have used it. You can get answers to any query or confusion from them. 

How was the initial setup?

Prometheus' deployment is easy and can be completed in seconds. 

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

Prometheus has both licensed and open-source versions. Most people use the open-source version. The licensing costs are not expensive. 

What other advice do I have?

I rate the product a nine out of ten. 

If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?

Amazon Web Services (AWS)
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Vassilis Vassiliou - PeerSpot reviewer
Director of Cyber Security & Resilience at Novibet
Real User
Top 5
A stable solution that fixes system health issues but needs to improve security monitoring-oriented features
Pros and Cons
  • "It is a stable solution...Based on the feedback I have received from my colleagues in our company's IT department, the setup phase of the solution is relatively easy."
  • "The solution has shortcomings regarding security monitoring-oriented features to support custom use cases, like out-of-the-box test scenarios and threat-related use cases of its users."

What is our primary use case?

I am responsible for looking after the security part of my company, for which I received Prometheus from the operational and IT teams. I am not a direct user of the solution, and I am responsible for the decisions regarding the security part.

How has it helped my organization?

The solution fixes system health issues while offering features like operational monitoring of our company's current infrastructure and business applications.

What is most valuable?

I do not have an opinion on the most valuable features of the solution since, in our company, we are not concerned with comparing Prometheus, Grafana, and Wazuh. My company wants to see how the internal tools and processes we have in place could be augmented or expanded to cover security monitoring before deciding to move to an outsourced solution from a managed service provider.

What needs improvement?

The solution has shortcomings regarding security monitoring-oriented features to support custom use cases, like out-of-the-box test scenarios and threat-related use cases of its users. The aforementioned area can be improved in future releases of Prometheus.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Prometheus for three years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

It is a stable solution.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

The users of the solution in my company are between the range of 50 to 100.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

I have experience with Zabbix and Grafana, mainly for operational purposes like monitoring. Now, my company wants to focus on security monitoring, for which we need something more robust, like Wazuh.

How was the initial setup?

Based on the feedback I have received from my colleagues in our company's IT department, the setup phase of the solution is relatively easy. Rather than focusing on the maintenance of the solution, my company focuses on the flexibility of the new features and the customization capabilities introduced.

The solution is deployed on the cloud.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

My company doesn't need to pay for the licensing cost of the solution.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

My company is in the process of deciding whether or not to proceed with an in-house SIEM and SOC structure source services completely to a managed service provider. In my company's evaluation process, we have assessed tools like Wazuh considering the scenarios, like our in-house resources and capabilities.

What other advice do I have?

I would say Prometheus needs a very low maintenance effort from a maintenance perspective.

I recommend the product to those planning to use it.

Based on the fact that my company has been using the solution for the last couple of years, I rate the overall solution a seven out of ten.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Buyer's Guide
Download our free Prometheus Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.
Updated: January 2025
Buyer's Guide
Download our free Prometheus Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.