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About Prometheus
Prometheus is a popular open-source monitoring and alerting toolkit designed for collecting and querying metrics, primarily in cloud-native environments. Developed as part of the CNCF ecosystem, Prometheus uses a pull-based model to scrape metrics from targets and stores them in its local time-series database. It's widely adopted for monitoring applications and infrastructure in DevOps settings, featuring a powerful query language (PromQL) and strong integration with Grafana for visualization.
GreptimeDB vs. Prometheus
| Feature/Aspect | GreptimeDB | Prometheus |
|---|---|---|
| Data Model | Unified Observability Database | Time-Series Database |
| Value Model | Multi-Value (supports complex data structures) | Single-Value (metrics only) |
| Multi-model Support | Metrics, Logs & Traces in one database | Metrics only (requires separate systems for logs/traces) |
| Ingestion Protocols | SQL gRPC InfluxDB Line Protocol Prometheus Remote Storage OpenTelemetry Loki Push API Elasticsearch Bulk API HTTP API | Pull-based Scraping Push Gateway (HTTP) Remote Write API |
| Query Languages | SQL & PromQL (dual interface) | PromQL only |
| Data Retention | Flexible TTL policies with tiered storage | Configuration-based retention (15 days default) |
| Continuous Aggregation | Built-in SQL aggregation, Pipeline ETL engine & Flow streaming computation | Recording rules (limited aggregation) |
| Use Cases | Unified observability, real-time analytics, IoT monitoring, edge computing | Application monitoring, infrastructure monitoring, alerting |
| Architecture | Cloud-native distributed architecture with compute-storage separation | Single-node with optional federation for scaling |
| Storage Format | Apache Parquet (columnar, highly compressed) | Custom TSDB format (optimized for time-series) |
| Storage Scalability | Object storage integration (S3, GCS, etc.) with unlimited capacity | Local disk storage with limited retention |
| High Availability | Native clustering with automatic failover | Requires manual federation setup |
| License | Apache 2.0 | Apache 2.0 |
| Deployment Options | Single-node, cluster, Kubernetes-native, edge-to-cloud with unified API | Single binary, container, Kubernetes operator |
| Operational Complexity | Single unified system with simplified Kubernetes operations | Requires additional components for full observability |
| Written Language | Rust (memory safety, performance) | Go (simplicity, fast development) |
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