Prometheus has become the de facto standard for open-source monitoring and alerting in cloud-native environments, particularly in Kubernetes ecosystems. However, running Prometheus at scale can be challenging due to its single-node architecture and storage constraints. Cloud providers—AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud—offer managed services and integrations that help alleviate operational burdens while enhancing scalability and reliability. This post explores how to run Prometheus on these cloud platforms, focusing on managed services, architectural best practices, and advanced configurations for intermediate and advanced users.

Why Use Managed Prometheus Services in the Cloud

Managing Prometheus yourself involves handling storage scaling, high availability, upgrades, and operational complexities. Managed services abstract much of this complexity, offering:

  • Scalable storage backends designed for long-term retention
  • Automatic upgrades and patching for security and features
  • Integration with native cloud monitoring tools for a unified observability stack
  • Built-in high availability and disaster recovery
  • Simplified setup and maintenance freeing up your DevOps resources

Leveraging these benefits ensures your monitoring infrastructure is resilient, cost-effective, and aligned with cloud-native best practices.

Running Prometheus on AWS with Amazon Managed Service for Prometheus (AMP)

Amazon Managed Service for Prometheus (AMP) is a fully managed monitoring service built on the open-source Prometheus project. It enables scalable ingestion, storage, and querying of Prometheus metrics without managing the underlying infrastructure.

Key Features of AMP:

  • Scalable and durable storage: AMP uses AWS’s scalable backend to store metrics for months or years, overcoming local storage limitations.
  • Compatibility: AMP supports PromQL queries natively, making it easy to migrate existing Prometheus workloads.
  • Integration: Seamlessly integrates with Amazon EKS, EC2, and CloudWatch for metric collection and alerting.
  • Security: Supports AWS IAM for fine-grained access control and encryption at rest and in transit.

Best Practices:

  • Use the AMP workspace to isolate environments (dev, staging, production).
  • Deploy amp-remote-write in your Kubernetes clusters or EC2 instances to stream metrics directly to AMP.
  • Leverage Amazon Managed Grafana for visualization tightly coupled with AMP metrics.
  • Monitor AMP usage and cost with AWS Cost Explorer to optimize ingestion and retention policies.

Running Prometheus on Azure with Azure Monitor Managed Prometheus

Microsoft Azure offers Azure Monitor Managed Prometheus, a native managed Prometheus service built into Azure Monitor. It simplifies monitoring for Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) and other workloads.

Key Features:

  • Native integration with AKS: Collects Prometheus metrics without manual scraping configuration.
  • Managed scaling: Azure automatically manages ingestion pipelines and storage scaling.
  • Querying and alerting: Use Azure Monitor Metrics Explorer and Alerts for Prometheus metrics.
  • Security: Integration with Azure Active Directory (AAD) enables fine-grained RBAC for monitoring data.

Best Practices:

  • Enable Azure Monitor for containers with Prometheus integration on AKS clusters to start collecting metrics immediately.
  • Use Azure Monitor Workbooks for custom dashboards combining Prometheus and Azure-native metrics.
  • Leverage Azure Policy to enforce monitoring standards across your Kubernetes clusters.
  • Use the Azure CLI and ARM templates to automate the deployment of monitoring stacks.

Running Prometheus on Google Cloud with Managed Service for Prometheus

Google Cloud’s Managed Service for Prometheus builds on the open-source Prometheus ecosystem and integrates tightly with Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) and Google Cloud Monitoring.

Key Features:

  • Fully managed ingestion and long-term storage powered by Google Cloud Monitoring backend.
  • PromQL support: Query metrics using PromQL in Cloud Monitoring UI or APIs.
  • Seamless GKE integration: Autodiscovery and scraping of Kubernetes workloads with minimal configuration.
  • Security and compliance: Google Cloud IAM-based access control and encryption.

Best Practices:

  • Enable the Managed Service for Prometheus API and configure GKE clusters with managedPrometheus enabled.
  • Use the prometheus-to-sd agent for metric forwarding from non-GKE environments.
  • Combine Prometheus metrics with Google Cloud’s logging and tracing for full observability.
  • Optimize retention and query costs by configuring metric scraping intervals and downsampling policies.

Architectural Considerations for Cloud-Native Prometheus Deployments

When running Prometheus on any cloud provider, consider these advanced architectural topics to maximize reliability and performance:

  • High Availability (HA): Use multiple Prometheus replicas with sharding or federation to avoid single points of failure. Managed services often handle this automatically.
  • Storage and Retention: Balance query performance and cost by configuring appropriate retention periods and offloading to long-term storage solutions like Thanos or Cortex if self-managed.
  • Security: Implement robust authentication and authorization using cloud-native IAM systems. Encrypt data in transit and at rest.
  • Cost Management: Continuously monitor ingestion rates, retention times, and query loads to optimize cost-efficiency. Use native cloud cost management tools.
  • Alerting and Visualization: Integrate Prometheus with cloud-native alerting services and managed Grafana instances for rich visualization and notification workflows.

Conclusion

Running Prometheus in the cloud using managed services from AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud significantly simplifies operational overhead while providing scalable, secure, and integrated monitoring solutions. By leveraging Amazon Managed Service for Prometheus, Azure Monitor Managed Prometheus, or Google Cloud’s Managed Service for Prometheus, intermediate and advanced users can focus on building observability-driven applications rather than managing complex infrastructure. Careful architectural planning, security best practices, and cost optimization strategies ensure a robust monitoring setup tailored to modern cloud environments.

Embrace managed Prometheus solutions to unlock the full potential of cloud-native monitoring and drive better insights and reliability for your applications.