About Thanos
Thanos is an open source system that extends Prometheus so that metrics can be queried across many servers and stored for a long time. It is a Cloud Native Computing Foundation incubating project.
What it does
Thanos lets you run several Prometheus servers and query them as one. It stores older metrics in object storage, so retention is not tied to the disk on a single server. Historical data can be downsampled, which makes queries over long time ranges faster. Because it supports the Prometheus Query API, tools such as Grafana can work with it without changes to their queries.
Key features
- Global query view across Prometheus servers
- Long-term storage in object storage
- Compatible with the Prometheus Query API
- Downsampling and compaction of old data
Who it's for
Platform and infrastructure teams that already use Prometheus and need more retention or a single query point across clusters. Teams with several clusters or regions often adopt it to keep monitoring highly available.
Pricing and good to know
The project is licensed under Apache 2.0 and is free to use. Object storage can be provided by GCP, S3, Azure, Swift or Tencent COS, so storage costs depend on your provider and retention policy. Thanos is a set of components rather than a single app, so it takes some planning to deploy and operate.
Highlights
- Query several Prometheus servers as one
- Store metrics in object storage for long periods
- Works with the Prometheus Query API
- Downsample old data for faster long range queries
