# Prometheus

Generated on 28 Apr 2025 from [the Prometheus catalog page](https://marketplace.digitalocean.com/apps/prometheus)

Prometheus is an open-source systems monitoring and alerting toolkit part of the [Cloud Native Computing Foundation](https://cncf.io/) . Since its inception in 2012, many companies and organizations have adopted Prometheus, and the project has a very active developer and user [community](https://prometheus.io/community). Prometheus’s main features are: - a multi-dimensional [data model](https://prometheus.io/docs/concepts/data_model/) with time series data identified by metric name and key/value pairs - PromQL, a [flexible query language](https://prometheus.io/docs/prometheus/latest/querying/basics/) to leverage this dimensionality - no reliance on distributed storage; single server nodes are autonomous - time series collection happens via a pull model over HTTP - [pushing time series](https://prometheus.io/docs/instrumenting/pushing/) is supported via an intermediary gateway - targets are discovered via service discovery or static configuration - multiple modes of graphing and dashboarding support.

## Software Included

| Package | Version | License |
|---|---|---|
| [Prometheus](https://prometheus.io) | [3.3.0](https://github.com/prometheus/prometheus/releases) | [Apache 2](https://github.com/prometheus/prometheus/blob/master/LICENSE) |

## Creating an App using the Control Panel

Click the **Deploy to DigitalOcean** button to create a Droplet based on this 1-Click App. If you aren’t logged in, this link will prompt you to log in with your DigitalOcean account.

[![Deploy to DO](https://www.deploytodo.com/do-btn-blue.svg)](https://cloud.digitalocean.com/droplets/new?image=prometheus-18-04)

## Creating an App using the API

In addition to creating a Droplet from the Prometheus 1-Click App using the control panel, you can also use the [DigitalOcean API](https://docs.digitalocean.com/reference/api). As an example, to create a 4GB Prometheus Droplet in the SFO2 region, you can use the following `curl` command. You need to either save your [API access token](https://docs.digitalocean.com/reference/api/create-personal-access-token/index.html.md) to an environment variable or substitute it in the command below.

```shell
curl -X POST -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
         -H 'Authorization: Bearer '$TOKEN'' -d \
        '{"name":"choose_a_name","region":"sfo2","size":"s-2vcpu-4gb","image":"prometheus-18-04"}' \
        "https://api.digitalocean.com/v2/droplets"
```

## Getting Started After Deploying Prometheus

In the One Click app, we run Prometheus on port 9090.

Prometheus is configured via a config file found at /etc/prometheus/prometheus.yml in the droplet. You can add and configure which targets are scraped by Prometheus using the config file. Once you edit the config file, run `sudo systemctl reload prometheus.service` to pick up the new changes.

For documentation visit: [https://prometheus.io/docs/introduction/overview/](https://prometheus.io/docs/introduction/overview/) and the docs around configuration can be found [here](https://prometheus.io/docs/prometheus/latest/configuration/configuration/).

### Quick Start

After the droplet is created you can visit the prometheus UI on

```
http://your_server_ip:9090/
```

Prometheus by default is configured to monitor itself. You can add more targets by editing the config file located at `/etc/prometheus/prometheus.yml` on the droplet. For a run through of what is happening and how to write queries, refer to this [guide](https://prometheus.io/docs/guides/node-exporter/).

### Production

When running in production, you should make sure that prometheus is not exposed to public but rather only to a few users protected by a reverse-proxy/firewall. This [guide](https://prometheus.io/docs/guides/basic-auth/) gives you an example on how to do that using basic auth and NGINX.