> For the complete documentation index, see [llms.txt](https://docs.ionos.com/cloud/llms.txt). Markdown versions of documentation pages are available by appending `.md` to page URLs; this page is available as [Markdown](https://docs.ionos.com/cloud/observability/monitoring-service/overview/metric-sources.md).

# Metric Sources

Monitoring Service supports metrics from various Promethues compatible metric sources. Selected agents or exporters can push metrics to selected regional endpoint for ingestion. The collected metrics are processed, stored, and made available. You can then query and visualize the metrics as desired.

{% hint style="info" %}
**Note:** You can send Prometheus compatible metrics from anywhere as long as you can reach the service endpoint.
{% endhint %}

Examples provide some suggested and functional Prometheus configurations for our available metric sources.

{% tabs %}
{% tab title="Prometheus" %}
Prometheus is a monitoring and alerting toolkit that is designed for reliability and scalability. It is a pull-based system that scrapes metrics from instrumented jobs, either directly or via an intermediary push gateway for short-lived jobs. It stores all scraped samples locally and runs rules over this data to either aggregate and record new time series from existing data or generate alerts. We also recommend you try our [<mark style="color:blue;">Prometheus</mark>](https://github.com/ionos-cloud/observability-services-user-documentation/tree/main/monitoring/examples/prometheus) sample configuration.
{% endtab %}

{% tab title="Grafana Agent" %}
Grafana Agent is an OpenTelemetry Collector distribution with configuration inspired by Terraform. It is designed to be flexible, performant, and compatible with multiple ecosystems. It works with both `Prometheus` and `OpenTelemetry`, among others. We also recommend that you try our [<mark style="color:blue;">Grafana Agent</mark>](https://github.com/ionos-cloud/observability-services-user-documentation/tree/main/monitoring/examples/grafana-agent) sample configuration.
{% endtab %}

{% tab title="OpenTelemetry" %}
OpenTelemetry is a collection of APIs, SDKs, and tools. Use it to instrument, generate, collect, and export telemetry data (metrics) to help you analyze your software's performance and behavior. We also recommend you try our [<mark style="color:blue;">OpenTelemetry</mark>](https://github.com/ionos-cloud/observability-services-user-documentation/tree/main/monitoring/examples/opentelemetry) sample configuration.

{% hint style="info" %}
**Note:** Monitoring Service accepts metrics natively in the OpenTelemetry Protocol (OTLP) format via the pipeline's `/otlp/v1/metrics` endpoint, in addition to the Prometheus remote-write path. OpenTelemetry (OTel) exponential histograms sent over OTLP are queryable as Prometheus native histograms in Grafana. For more information, see [<mark style="color:blue;">Metric Pipelines</mark>](/cloud/observability/monitoring-service/overview/metric-pipelines.md).
{% endhint %}
{% endtab %}

{% tab title="FluentBit" %}
FluentBit is a super fast, lightweight, and highly scalable tool. It processes and forwards both logs and metrics. It is the preferred choice for cloud and containerized environments. We also recommend you try our [<mark style="color:blue;">FluentBit</mark>](https://github.com/ionos-cloud/observability-services-user-documentation/tree/main/monitoring/examples/fluentbit) sample configuration. This repository provides a basic example of how to configure FluentBit to send metrics to the Ionos Monitoring Service.
{% endtab %}
{% endtabs %}


---

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