Centreon vs Prometheus: What are the differences?

Introduction

In this Markdown code, we will outline the key differences between Centreon and Prometheus, two popular monitoring tools used for IT infrastructure management.

1. Scalability: Centreon is a powerful monitoring tool known for its scalability and performance. It can handle large-scale environments with thousands of hosts and services. On the other hand, Prometheus is designed for small to medium-sized environments and may struggle to scale efficiently in larger deployments.

2. Data Storage: Centreon relies on a traditional relational database management system (RDBMS) for data storage. This provides the advantage of using a structured and well-established database technology. In contrast, Prometheus uses a custom time-series database that is optimized for storing and retrieving time-series data. This allows Prometheus to handle high-resolution monitoring data efficiently.

3. Alerting and Notification: Centreon offers a comprehensive alerting and notification system. It provides flexible configuration options for defining alert rules and supports various notification methods like email, SMS, and integration with third-party tools. Prometheus also has alerting capabilities but its approach is more focused on rule-based alerts and uses its own Alertmanager component for managing notifications.

4. Data Collection: Centreon collects monitoring data using passive and active checks. Passive checks involve receiving data from monitored hosts, while active checks involve actively querying hosts for data. Prometheus, on the other hand, follows a pull-based model where it scrapes metrics from the targets exposed by exporters. This allows Prometheus to collect data from a wide range of systems and applications.

5. Query and Visualization: Centreon provides a web-based interface that allows users to query and visualize monitoring data. It offers various pre-built views and reports to analyze data and track performance. Prometheus has its own query language called PromQL, which allows users to perform powerful queries and aggregations on time-series data. It also provides a built-in visualization tool called Grafana, which offers rich visualizations and dashboards for Prometheus data.

6. Community and Ecosystem: Centreon has a strong community and a wide range of plugins and extensions available. It provides a marketplace for users to share and download additional functionalities. Prometheus also has a vibrant community and a rich ecosystem of exporters, integrations, and third-party tools. However, being relatively newer compared to Centreon, the availability of certain plugins or integrations may vary.

In summary, Centreon excels in scalability, data storage using RDBMS, and a comprehensive alerting system. On the other hand, Prometheus shines in its custom time-series database, pull-based data collection, powerful query language, and visualization capabilities using Grafana. Both tools have active communities but Centreon has a more established marketplace for additional functionalities.