BYTE the Cloud

Chris 0:00
Welcome back everyone to another deep dive this time we're taking a look at Amazon Managed Service for Prometheus. Excellent choice. Yeah, I'm really interested in this one. So you all as mid level cloud engineers are probably already pretty familiar with monitoring in the cloud, right? So we're gonna jump right into the specifics of this service today. Okay? And we're gonna start with a general overview, then go into, like, a deep dive, the technical stuff, yeah, and then finish with a look at what you might encounter on an AWS exam. About this service. How's that sound? Sounds good. Cool. So let's, let's jump right in. What is this thing? What is Amazon Managed Service for Prometheus?

Kelly 0:40
Well, in a nutshell, it's a fully managed service from AWS that basically takes the power of open source Prometheus and makes it easily accessible. Gotcha within the AWS ecosystem, monitoring and troubleshooting your containerized apps.

Chris 0:56
So it's taking something that's kind of a pain to manage on your own, and just making it easy, exactly

Kelly 1:02
like what's so fascinating here is that AWS recognized a common pain point, okay, especially for like, large containerized applications, or if you're running Kubernetes, managing Prometheus on your own can be a real challenge. Oh, yeah, definitely. So what this service does is it basically takes away all of those operational headaches, right? Of managing it at scale, so that you can focus on what really matters, okay?

Chris 1:29
So instead of messing with the tool itself, yeah, you can focus on getting those insights exactly,

Kelly 1:33
gaining insights from your metrics. That makes

Chris 1:36
sense. Can you give me, like, a real world example, like, how would I actually use this? Yeah, absolutely.

Kelly 1:40
So let's say you're working on an E commerce platform, okay, and it's running on Kubernetes pretty standard these days, yeah, with, you know, maybe dozens of micro services, okay, you need to make sure everything's running smoothly, right, always, especially during like, peak traffic times, right? That's where Amazon Managed Service for Prometheus really shines, yeah, it simplifies collecting metrics from all those different microservices. Gotcha, giving you a centralized view of your application's performance,

Chris 2:10
okay? So it's like a single pane of glass for all of your monitoring data precisely,

Kelly 2:15
and with that centralized view, you can quickly identify any bottlenecks, yeah, you don't want those right and troubleshoot issues like in real time.

Chris 2:25
And ultimately, it's all about making sure customers have a great experience, right? Exactly

Kelly 2:29
you want to ensure a seamless experience for your customers. Okay,

Chris 2:33
that makes a lot of sense. So you get the power of Prometheus, but it's streamlined and integrated right within your AWS infrastructure.

Kelly 2:41
Exactly. You got it, plus you can easily integrate it with other AWS services. Oh, okay, like, you know, CloudWatch for even better observability and alerting,

Chris 2:49
right, right? So it's not just like a standalone tool, no, no. It's all about integration. It fits into that broader ecosystem. Okay, so let's talk about some of the technical features that make this service so cool, sure. One of the things that I really like is the automatic scaling of storage. Oh, yeah, that's a big one. That's super convenient, and it can really help save money, right? Absolutely.

Kelly 3:09
Imagine like you've got this sudden surge in traffic, okay, yeah, and your application starts, you know, generating a ton more metrics

Chris 3:18
data. Yeah, you don't want to be scrambling to add more storage exactly

Kelly 3:21
with Amazon Managed Service for Prometheus, you don't have to worry about that. It just scales automatically. That's awesome to meet your needs. You know, you never

Chris 3:29
miss a critical metric, and you only pay for what you use exactly. I like that. That's a huge relief, honestly, for anyone who's ever had to, like manually manage storage for a growing application. Oh, no, right? It's a nightmare. Yeah? So while we're talking about cost effectiveness, let's talk about long term data retention. Yeah, good point. This lets you keep, you know, historical metrics around for analysis and planning, which can be super valuable. Oh, absolutely.

Kelly 3:58
It's almost like having a time machine. Oh, okay, for applications performance, you know, I like that. You can go back and look at those trends, identify patterns, forecast future needs,

Chris 4:09
and even, like, pinpoint the root cause of issues that might have happened weEKS or months ago. Yeah. So this is good, not just for troubleshooting, but also for planning, exactly,

Kelly 4:19
capacity planning, understanding those long term performance trends. Yeah.

Chris 4:24
Now this all sounds great, but I'm sure there are some limitations.

Kelly 4:27
Of course. Yeah, no. Service is perfect, right?

Chris 4:30
Are there any limitations we should be aware of with Amazon Managed Service for Prometheus?

Kelly 4:35
Well, one thing to keep in mind is that it's primarily focused on ingesting metrics from containerized workloads. So if you're not running containers, yeah, if you have a lot of non containerized applications, this service might not be the best fit for you right now, right?

Chris 4:50
It's really targeted towaRDS that container world. Yeah, makes sense. Okay, so now let's shift gears a little bit, okay, and talk about exams. You know, if you're preparing for an AWS. Notification, right? Particularly one related to DevOps or Solutions Architect. Yeah, you're probably going to see questions about Amazon Managed Service for Prometheus on the exam. Definitely.

Kelly 5:10
Yeah. It's becoming increasingly important, you know, right in the cloud native world. So

Chris 5:15
let's put on our exam hats and think about some of the questions you might encounter. Yeah. Let's do it like for instance, a common one you might see is, when would you choose Amazon Managed Service for Prometheus right over a self managed Prometheus deployment? Oh, that's a classic. Yeah. It's really about understanding, you know, when to manage it yourself and when to let AWS handle the complexity Exactly.

Kelly 5:38
So the answer it kind of boils down to few key considerations, okay, scalability is a big one. Yeah, if you need to handle massive amounts of metrics data, right, and you need a solution that scales easily, the

Chris 5:53
managed service is going to be the better choice, most likely.

Kelly 5:55
Yeah, okay. And then there's the ease of management, right,

Chris 5:58
right? Do you really want to be spending your time messing with infrastructure. Exactly,

Kelly 6:02
do you want to be provisioning and configuring and maintaining your own Prometheus infrastructure? Or

Chris 6:07
would you rather focus on building applications? Yeah, exactly. And of course, like you mentioned earlier, seamless integration with other AWS services is a huge plus,

Kelly 6:18
absolutely, if your whole infrastructure is already in. AWS makes sense to keep it all together. It just makes your workflow so much smoother, and you can take advantage of all those, you know, rich features, right

Chris 6:29
that AWS offers, okay, okay, let's do another exam question, okay, yeah, how does Amazon Managed Service for Prometheus integrate with CloudWatch? Oh, good. One for enhanced monitoring and

Kelly 6:40
alerting. Yeah, this is key. It's all about getting that holistic view of your application's performance Exactly. So basically, Amazon Managed Service for Prometheus can stream its metrics directly into CloudWatch, and once that data is in CloudWatch, you can use all the power of CloudWatch. You can set up alarms, create dashboards, use all those monitoring tools. Okay? CloudWatch offers So if, for example, you wanted to be alerted when the latency for a particular microservice crossed a certain threshold, you could set up a CloudWatch alarm right using the metrics that are coming from Amazon Managed Service for Prometheus. Exactly,

Chris 7:23
you got it. It's a great way to combine those two. You know, you get the specialized metrics from Prometheus, right, with the powerful alerting and visualization of CloudWatch, yeah? And it gives you a really unified monitoring solution, makes

Kelly 7:36
sense? Yeah? That sounds like a really powerful combination. It is. So let's say I'm on a team and we're brand new to Amazon Managed Service for Prometheus, okay, what are some of the things we should keep in mind, like, what are some best practices to ensure we have a good implementation? Yeah, that's

Chris 7:53
a great question. You know, you want to set things up right from the beginning, right of course, lay a solid foundation. So first and foremost, I would say, make sure you really understand your application's architecture. Okay, so really know what you're working with, yeah,

Kelly 8:10
like, which components are really critical, okay, what are your, you know, key performance indicators? Really understand that, yeah, get that all mapped out, then you can identify the specific Prometheus metrics that are going to align with those KPIs. So don't try to boil the ocean. No, no, no, that's going to lead to data overload, right? And it can get expensive. Yeah, no one wants that exactly, so you want to focus on the metrics that really matter, right, the things that actually tell you something exactly. And then, once you've identified those key metrics, okay, think about your deployment strategy. Okay, like if you're using Kubernetes, leverage the Prometheus operator, okay, that can really simplify things.

Chris 8:49
Okay, so use the tools that are available,

Kelly 8:51
yes, and, of course, don't forget about security. Security always important, always, you know, use IAM roles and policies, okay to control who has access to your Prometheus data. You want to make sure that only authorized people can see that sensitive information makes

Chris 9:10
sense. Okay, so we've talked a lot about metrics. Yeah, Amazon Managed Service for Prometheus is great for collecting and analyzing metrics. Uh huh. But are there any other tools or services that we should be thinking about. Like, how can we get a truly, like, comprehensive view of our applications health? That's

Kelly 9:29
a really good point. You know, no single tool is going to give you the whole picture, right? You need to incorporate other telemetry data as well, okay? Like, what like logs and traces, for example, right? And the good news is, AWS has a bunch of services that can work really well alongside Amazon Managed Service for Prometheus.

Chris 9:48
So it's about like weaving all of this data together exactly

Kelly 9:51
you want to create a more holistic understanding of your applications behavior

Chris 9:56
makes sense. So what are some examples of those services?

Kelly 9:59
Well, you've got cloud. Watch logs for

Chris 10:00
starters. Oh, yeah, CloudWatch logs. Good one. That's

Kelly 10:03
your central hub for all your application logs. You can collect, store, analyze log data from tons of different sources, okay, which gives you really valuable insights into what's happening under the hood of your application.

Chris 10:16
Okay, so logs are one piece of the puzzle. What else? And

Kelly 10:19
then for like, really deep insights into request tracing, okay? And performance bottlenecks. You've got AWS X-Ray. Oh, yeah, X-Rays, awesome. It is. And when you combine those services, yeah, with Amazon Managed Service for Prometheus, you're really getting the full picture. You get a powerful observability platform, okay? That gives you a much deeper understanding of your application. It's performance,

Chris 10:43
it's health, all that good stuff, exact. So it's like metrics, logs, traces, yeah, all working together to give you that comprehensive view. All right, let's go back to exam prep for a minute. I think pricing is something that trips a lot of people up. Oh

Kelly 10:55
yeah, for sure. It can be a bit confusing.

Chris 10:57
Can you break down the pricing model for Amazon Managed Service for Prometheus, yeah, absolutely. It's

Kelly 11:02
important to understand both for the exam and for managing your costs in the real world,

Unknown Speaker 11:07
right? For sure.

Kelly 11:08
So the pricing is mainly based on the number of active series, active series that are ingested by the service. Think of an active series as like a distinct data stream that you're tracking, okay, each unique combination of metric name and label values

Chris 11:26
that receives new data points during a given hour is considered an active series Exactly.

Kelly 11:30
So basically, the more metrics you're tracking and the more frequently those metrics are updated, right, the higher your costs are going to

Chris 11:39
be. Okay, that makes sense, but I guess there are ways to manage those costs. Oh, yeah, what if you have a ton of data?

Kelly 11:45
Well, AWS offers volume discounts, so your per series cost actually goes down as you ingest more data. Okay,

Chris 11:53
so the more you use it, the cheaper it gets, in a way, yeah, but you

Kelly 11:57
also have to remember that you're gonna be charged for storing your metrics data. Yeah,

Chris 12:01
of course, storage is always a factor, yep. And that

Kelly 12:05
includes both the storage within the service itself, okay, and any remote write destinations you might have set up, like if you're

Chris 12:12
sending data to S3 or something like exactly. So you really need to be mindful of how much data you're collecting and how long you're keeping

Kelly 12:18
it absolutely. And the good news is, AWS provides some tools, so to help you with that, like the cost explorer, oh, yeah, cost explorers love that tool, and the AWS pricing calculator, you can use those to kind of estimate your costs,

Chris 12:32
right, and see how different choices might affect your bill exactly, so you can make informed decisions about your monitoring setup, yep. Okay, let's talk about security. Okay, that's always a big concern. Always top of mind. How does Amazon manage service for Prometheus handle security?

Kelly 12:49
So security is a core part of the service, okay, good. It's integrated with,

Chris 12:53
I am, right. I am. That's AWS identity and access management, right? For those who don't know. So

Kelly 12:59
that gives you a lot of control over who can access your Prometheus workspaces, right? And the data inside those workspaces, so you

Chris 13:07
can restrict access based on roles and responsibilities exactly and make sure that people only see what they need to see. And on

Kelly 13:15
top of that, all the data that's moving to and from the service is encrypted, okay, using TLS, so

Chris 13:21
it's protected both in transit and at rest, exactly. Okay, so they've really thought about

Kelly 13:26
security here, yeah, multiple layers of protection to keep your data safe. All right. Last question,

Chris 13:31
any common pitfalls or challenges that you've seen teams run into, like, what are some things to watch out for?

Kelly 13:38
Yeah, I'd say one of the biggest pitfalls is jumping in without a clear strategy,

Chris 13:41
right? Don't just start collecting everything, right? It's easy to

Kelly 13:45
get excited about a new tool and start collecting all the data you can. Yeah, I've been there, but that can lead to data overload and unnecessary costs. Makes sense. You really need to define your monitoring goals up front. Okay, figure out what your key performance indicators are, right? Those KPIs and then map those KPIs to specific Prometheus metrics. So it's about being selective Exactly. Another common challenge is underestimating the importance of configuration and security, right? You mentioned that earlier. Amazon Managed Service for Prometheus is a really powerful tool, yeah, and if you misconfigure it,

Chris 14:19
you could expose sensitive data exactly or create vulnerabilities.

Kelly 14:24
So take the time to learn about the security features. Okay, implement proper IAM policies, right? And follow AWS best practices for security. Good advice, and my last bit of advice would be to use the resources that AWS provides. Okay, you know, they have tons of documentation, tutorials, support channels, so

Chris 14:44
don't be afraid to reach out for help. Exactly, okay. Well, I think we've covered a ton of ground today. We have. We've talked about all the core features of Amazon Managed Service for Prometheus, yeah, we looked at how it integrates with other AWS services, and we even did some. Exam Prep, little exam practice, yeah, to get you ready for your AWS certification. Exactly.

Unknown Speaker 15:04
So

Chris 15:05
any final words of wisdom, anything else you want to leave our listeners with,

Kelly 15:09
I would say the most important takeaway is this, embrace observability. Make it part of your culture. Okay, don't just react to problems. Build monitoring into your development and operations processes, right? Be proactive, exactly, actively. Look for ways to gain more insights into your applications, and use those insights to continuously improve your

Chris 15:31
performance, your reliability, all that good stuff. Exactly, with

Kelly 15:35
tools like Amazon Managed Service for Prometheus, you can

Chris 15:38
really take your cloud native applications to the next level

Kelly 15:41
absolutely well, that's

Chris 15:42
great advice. Thanks for joining me on this deep dive.

Kelly 15:45
It was my pleasure.

Chris 15:46
I learned a lot today, glad to hear it, and I'm sure our listeners did too. I hope so. We'll see you next time for another deep dive into the world of AWS.