Prometheus and Grafana for Monitoring and Alerting

Course Overview

This course is designed to provide a comprehensive understanding of Prometheus and Grafana, two powerful tools for monitoring and alerting in modern infrastructure and application environments. You'll learn how to install, configure, and use these tools to collect, visualize, and analyze metrics, enabling you to proactively identify and resolve issues.

Course Objectives

Upon completing this course, you will be able to:

• Understand the fundamentals of monitoring and alerting: Learn about key concepts like metrics, time series data, and alerting.

• Install and configure Prometheus: Set up Prometheus server, configure data sources, and define recording rules.

• Create and maintain Prometheus alerts: Write effective alert rules to notify you of critical issues.

• Install and configure Grafana: Set up Grafana dashboards, create visualizations, and configure alerts.

• Integrate Prometheus and Grafana: Connect Prometheus as a data source to Grafana and create insightful dashboards.

• Monitor Kubernetes clusters with Prometheus: Use Prometheus to monitor the health and performance of your Kubernetes clusters.

• Advanced Prometheus Concepts: Explore advanced topics like recording rules, alerting, and custom exporters.

Length: 3 Days

Course Outline

Module 1: Introduction to Monitoring and Alerting

• What is monitoring?

• Key concepts: metrics, time series data, alerts

• Importance of monitoring in modern infrastructure

• Overview of Prometheus and Grafana

Module 2: Installing and Configuring Prometheus

• Installing Prometheus on various platforms (Linux, Docker, Kubernetes)

• Configuring Prometheus:

  • Scrape targets and intervals

  • Storage configuration

  • Alerting rules

• Starting and stopping Prometheus

Module 3: Using Prometheus

• Querying Prometheus data: PromQL basics

• Creating alerts with Prometheus Alertmanager

• Visualizing metrics with Grafana

• Integrating Prometheus with other tools (e.g., PagerDuty, Slack)

Module 4: Monitoring Kubernetes with Prometheus

• Installing Prometheus Operator on Kubernetes

• Configuring Prometheus to scrape Kubernetes metrics

• Creating custom metrics for Kubernetes applications

• Visualizing Kubernetes metrics in Grafana

Module 5: Advanced Prometheus Concepts

• Recording rules and alerting rules

• PromQL best practices

• Custom exporters for specific applications

• Troubleshooting common issues

Module 6: Best Practices and Tips

• Best practices for Prometheus and Grafana configuration

• Effective alert management and notification strategies

• Troubleshooting common issues and performance optimization

• Future trends and advancements in monitoring and alerting