# Prometheus

Prometheus is a systems and service monitoring system. It collects metrics
from configured targets at given intervals, evaluates rule expressions,
displays the results, and can trigger alerts if some condition is observed
to be true.

Prometheus' main distinguishing features as compared to other monitoring systems are:

- a **multi-dimensional** data model (timeseries defined by metric name and set of key/value dimensions)
- a **flexible query language** to leverage this dimensionality
- no dependency on distributed storage; **single server nodes are autonomous**
- timeseries collection happens via a **pull model** over HTTP
- **pushing timeseries** is supported via an intermediary gateway
- targets are discovered via **service discovery** or **static configuration**
- multiple modes of **graphing and dashboarding support**
- **federation support** coming soon

## Architecture overview

![](https://cdn.rawgit.com/prometheus/prometheus/62b69b0/documentation/images/architecture.svg)

## Install

There are various ways of installing Prometheus.

### Precompiled packages

We plan to provide precompiled binaries for various platforms and even
packages for common Linux distributions soon. Once those are offered,
it will be the recommended way of installing Prometheus.

### Use `make`

In most cirumstances, the following should work:

    $ make build
    $ ./prometheus -config.file=documentation/examples/prometheus.conf

The above requires a number of common tools to be installed, namely
`curl`, `git`, `gzip`, `hg` (Mercurial CLI), `sed`, `xxd`. Should you
need to change any of the protocol buffer definition files
(`*.proto`), you also need the protocol buffer compiler
[`protoc`](http://code.google.com/p/protobuf/), v2.5.0 or higher,
in your `$PATH`.

Everything else will be downloaded and installed into a staging
environment in the `.build` sub-directory. That includes a Go
development environment of the appropriate version.

The `Makefile` offers a number of useful targets. Some examples:

* `make test` runs tests.
* `make tarball` creates a tarball with the binary for distribution.
* `make race_condition_run` compiles and runs a binary with the race detector enabled. To pass arguments when running Prometheus this way, set the `ARGUMENTS` environment variable (e.g. `ARGUMENTS="-config.file=./prometheus.conf" make race_condition_run`).

### Use your own Go development environment

Using your own Go development environment with the usual tooling is
possible, too, but you have to take care of various generated files
(usually by running `make` in the respective sub-directory):

* Compiling the protocol buffer definitions in `config` (only if you have changed them).
* Generating the parser and lexer code in `rules` (only if you have changed `parser.y` or `lexer.l`).
* The `files.go` blob in `web/blob`, which embeds the static web content into the binary.

Furthermore, the build info (see `build_info.go`) will not be
populated if you simply run `go build`. You have to pass in command
line flags as defined in `Makefile.INCLUDE` (see `${BUILDFLAGS}`) to
do that.

## More information

  * The source code is periodically indexed: [Prometheus Core](http://godoc.org/github.com/prometheus/prometheus).
  * You will find a Travis CI configuration in `.travis.yml`.
  * All of the core developers are accessible via the [Prometheus Developers Mailinglist](https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups#!forum/prometheus-developers) and the `#prometheus` channel on `irc.freenode.net`.

## Contributing

Refer to [CONTRIBUTING.md](CONTRIBUTING.md)

## License

Apache License 2.0, see [LICENSE](LICENSE).
