Prometheus vs InfluxDB: which should you choose?

Prometheus is geared toward infrastructure/application monitoring with built-in alerting. InfluxDB is better suited to time series from IoT sensors or high-frequency business data. For server monitoring, Prometheus is the standard.

What data retention for Prometheus?

By default, Prometheus keeps 15 days of data. Configurable via `--storage.tsdb.retention.time`. For long retention, Thanos or Cortex can be added.

Can you monitor several servers from one Prometheus instance?

Yes. Add the targets in the Prometheus configuration. Node Exporter must be reachable from the Prometheus VPS (via VPN or internal network).

Monitor your infrastructure.

Prometheus

Real-time metric collection and querying — the de facto standard for modern monitoring.

1 GB RAM 1 vCPU Port 9090 Available

Source code

Tech stack

DockerPrometheusAlertmanagerNode Exporter

Minimum RAM1 GB

Minimum CPU1 vCPU

Default port9090

Compatible OSubuntu-24.04

Prometheus is the open-source monitoring system that has become the industry standard for collecting infrastructure and application metrics. It works by scraping: at regular intervals, it queries your services (via exporters) and stores the metrics in its local time series database.

Paired with Grafana and Node Exporter on your ServOrbit VPS, you get a complete monitoring stack: real-time system metrics, configurable alerts and performance history. The template deploys Prometheus + Alertmanager + Node Exporter in a single `docker compose up`.

Key features

Metric collection via HTTP scraping

Expressive PromQL query language

Built-in time series database (no external dependency)

Alertmanager for alert routing and deduplication

Node Exporter for Linux system metrics

400+ available exporters (PostgreSQL, Nginx, Redis…)

When to use this solution?

1

Infrastructure monitoring

Collect CPU, RAM, disk, network and all the system metrics of your VPS via Node Exporter.

2

Kubernetes monitoring

The de facto standard for Kubernetes monitoring with kube-state-metrics and Prometheus Operator.

3

Proactive alerting

Define alert rules (CPU > 80% for 5 min, disk > 90%) and receive notifications via Alertmanager.

Deploy Prometheus on your VPS

Guide optimized for ServOrbit Cloud VPS.

01

Deploy the stack

The template deploys Prometheus, Alertmanager and Node Exporter via Docker Compose in a single startup.

02

Verify collection

Access Prometheus on port 9090. In Status > Targets, check that Node Exporter is UP.

03

Write your first queries

In the Prometheus explorer, test node_cpu_seconds_total or node_memory_MemAvailable_bytes to verify collection.

04

Connect to Grafana

Add Prometheus as a data source in Grafana and import the Node Exporter Full dashboard (ID 1860).

Frequently asked questions

Prometheus is an open-source monitoring system that collects metrics via HTTP scraping and stores them in a time series database.

Complementary solutions

Monitoring & Observability

Grafana

Visualize the metrics of your infrastructure and applications. Customizable dashboards, multi-channel alerts, multiple sources.