Prometheus as a Service

Introduction

This guide will provide instructions on how to install Prometheus as a service on Ubuntu 24.04.

• What is Prometheus?

Download and Install Prometheus

Navigate to the Prometheus Download Page and locate the release with the "Latest" tag. I typically do not use the beta version, and at the time of this wiki the latest version is prometheus-2.55.0.linux-amd64.tar.gz and it will be used as an example in future commands within this wiki.

Download the latest version to the home directory:

wget -P ~/ https://github.com/prometheus/prometheus/releases/download/v2.55.0/prometheus-2.55.0.linux-amd64.tar.gz

Extract the downloaded file:

tar -xvf ~/prometheus-2.55.0.linux-amd64.tar.gz

Move the extracted files:

sudo mv ~/prometheus-2.55.0.linux-amd64 /etc/prometheus

Delete the tar.gz file:

rm ~/prometheus-2.55.0.linux-amd64.tar.gz

Create the prometheus user:

sudo useradd -r -s /bin/false -c "Prometheus service account" -d /nonexistent prometheus

• -r makes it a system user
• --no-create-home: This option prevents the creation of a home directory for the prometheus user.
• --shell /bin/false: This prevents the user from being able to log in interactively.

Set permissions:

sudo chown -R prometheus:prometheus /etc/prometheus

Create a data directory in /var/lib for Prometheus storage:

sudo mkdir /var/lib/prometheus

Set permissions for the prometheus user:

sudo chown -R prometheus:prometheus /var/lib/prometheus

Create a systemd service:

sudo nano /etc/systemd/system/prometheus.service

Add the following configuration:

[Unit]
Description=Prometheus Service
Wants=network-online.target
After=network-online.target
 
[Service]
User=prometheus
Group=prometheus
Type=simple
ExecStart=/etc/prometheus/prometheus \
    --config.file=/etc/prometheus/prometheus.yml \
    --storage.tsdb.path=/var/lib/prometheus/ \
    --web.console.templates=/etc/prometheus/consoles \
    --web.console.libraries=/etc/prometheus/console_libraries
 
[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Save with Ctrl+X, Y, Enter.

Reload daemon:

sudo systemctl daemon-reload

Start service:

sudo systemctl start prometheus

Enable service to start on boot:

sudo systemctl enable prometheus

Verify the status:

sudo systemctl status prometheus

Access Prometheus

The Prometheus web front end should now be accessible on http://localhost:9090. If the service is running on another host, replace localhost with the IP of that host. To start scraping metrics, endpoints can be added to the prometheus.yml file, and then the prometheus service should be restarted for the changes to take effect.

Grafana

Learn how to add Prometheus as a data source for Grafana. If you are using Grafana Cloud, you will need to set up a PDC agent and add Prometheus as a data source.