Prometheus Cheat Sheet - Basics (Metrics, Labels, Time Series, Scraping)

Here we focus on the most basic Prometheus concepts - metrics, labels, scrapes, and time series.

What is a metric?

In Prometheus, everything revolves around metrics. A metric is a feature (i.e., a characteristic) of a system that is being measured. Typical examples of metrics are:

  • http_requests_total
  • http_request_size_bytes
  • system_memory_used_bytes
  • node_network_receive_bytes_total
Prometheus metrics

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