Comparison of Prometheus with other monitoring systems:
Comparison with Zabbix:
| Feature | Prometheus | Zabbix |
|---|---|---|
| Architecture | Pull mode | Push/Pull hybrid |
| Data Model | Time series | Relational database |
| Query Language | PromQL | Zabbix query language |
| Visualization | Requires Grafana | Built-in |
| Alerting | Alertmanager | Built-in |
| Auto-discovery | Rich | Rich |
| Use Cases | Cloud-native, containerized | Traditional IT infrastructure |
Comparison with Nagios:
- Prometheus: Active collection, suitable for dynamic environments
- Nagios: Passive checks, suitable for static environments
- Prometheus: Native container support
- Nagios: Requires plugins for container support
Comparison with InfluxDB:
- Prometheus: Focused on monitoring, Pull mode
- InfluxDB: General-purpose time-series database, Push mode
- Prometheus: Built-in service discovery
- InfluxDB: Requires external integration
Comparison with Datadog:
- Prometheus: Open source and free
- Datadog: Commercial SaaS, paid
- Prometheus: Self-maintenance required
- Datadog: Managed service, ready to use
- Prometheus: Highly customizable
- Datadog: High integration, easy to use
Comparison with ELK Stack:
- Prometheus: Numerical metric monitoring
- ELK: Log analysis
- Prometheus: Structured data
- ELK: Unstructured text
- Can be used complementarily
Selection Guidelines:
Choose Prometheus when:
- Using Kubernetes or containerized deployment
- Need cloud-native monitoring solution
- Limited budget, need open-source solution
- Need flexible querying and alerting
- Team has operational capabilities
Choose Zabbix when:
- Monitoring traditional IT infrastructure
- Need built-in alerting and visualization
- Team is familiar with Zabbix
- Need network device monitoring
Choose Datadog when:
- Sufficient budget
- Need rapid deployment
- Need full-stack monitoring (APM, logs, metrics)
- Small team, limited operational capabilities
Hybrid Solutions:
- Prometheus + Thanos: Long-term storage
- Prometheus + Grafana: Visualization
- Prometheus + Alertmanager: Alerting
- Prometheus + Loki: Log correlation