# Overview | Prometheus ![rw-book-cover](https://prometheus.io/assets/favicons/android-chrome-192x192.png) URL:: https://prometheus.io/docs/introduction/overview/ Author:: Prometheus ## Highlights > [Prometheus](https://github.com/prometheus) is an open-source systems monitoring and alerting toolkit originally built at [SoundCloud](https://soundcloud.com). 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). It is now a standalone open source project and maintained independently of any company. To emphasize this, and to clarify the project's governance structure, Prometheus joined the [Cloud Native Computing Foundation](https://cncf.io/) in 2016 as the second hosted project, after [Kubernetes](https://kubernetes.io/). ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01ff0z9fj598ze9zgnb7spzfrd)) > Prometheus works well for recording any purely numeric time series. It fits both machine-centric monitoring as well as monitoring of highly dynamic service-oriented architectures. In a world of microservices, its support for multi-dimensional data collection and querying is a particular strength. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01ff0za1a5fr1827xershcz9s0)) > Prometheus is designed for reliability, to be the system you go to during an outage to allow you to quickly diagnose problems. Each Prometheus server is standalone, not depending on network storage or other remote services. You can rely on it when other parts of your infrastructure are broken, and you do not need to setup extensive infrastructure to use it. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01ff0za2sttwc24fze7br4gcz9)) > When does it not fit? ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01ff0za4scet26x6jhge1m8ppm)) > Prometheus values reliability. You can always view what statistics are available about your system, even under failure conditions. If you need 100% accuracy, such as for per-request billing, Prometheus is not a good choice as the collected data will likely not be detailed and complete enough. In such a case you would be best off using some other system to collect and analyze the data for billing, and Prometheus for the rest of your monitoring. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01ff0zacp54r98na47wxgj7sr9)) --- Title: Overview | Prometheus Author: Prometheus Tags: readwise, articles date: 2024-01-30 --- # Overview | Prometheus ![rw-book-cover](https://prometheus.io/assets/favicons/android-chrome-192x192.png) URL:: https://prometheus.io/docs/introduction/overview/ Author:: Prometheus ## AI-Generated Summary An open-source monitoring system with a dimensional data model, flexible query language, efficient time series database and modern alerting approach. ## Highlights > [Prometheus](https://github.com/prometheus) is an open-source systems monitoring and alerting toolkit originally built at [SoundCloud](https://soundcloud.com). 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). It is now a standalone open source project and maintained independently of any company. To emphasize this, and to clarify the project's governance structure, Prometheus joined the [Cloud Native Computing Foundation](https://cncf.io/) in 2016 as the second hosted project, after [Kubernetes](https://kubernetes.io/). ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01ff0z9fj598ze9zgnb7spzfrd)) > Prometheus works well for recording any purely numeric time series. It fits both machine-centric monitoring as well as monitoring of highly dynamic service-oriented architectures. In a world of microservices, its support for multi-dimensional data collection and querying is a particular strength. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01ff0za1a5fr1827xershcz9s0)) > Prometheus is designed for reliability, to be the system you go to during an outage to allow you to quickly diagnose problems. Each Prometheus server is standalone, not depending on network storage or other remote services. You can rely on it when other parts of your infrastructure are broken, and you do not need to setup extensive infrastructure to use it. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01ff0za2sttwc24fze7br4gcz9)) > When does it not fit? ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01ff0za4scet26x6jhge1m8ppm)) > Prometheus values reliability. You can always view what statistics are available about your system, even under failure conditions. If you need 100% accuracy, such as for per-request billing, Prometheus is not a good choice as the collected data will likely not be detailed and complete enough. In such a case you would be best off using some other system to collect and analyze the data for billing, and Prometheus for the rest of your monitoring. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01ff0zacp54r98na47wxgj7sr9))