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medium riskservice affecting~30 min

Runbook: Install Prometheus

1 · Prerequisites

Confirm every item is in place before any state change.

  • Prometheus tarball
  • Linux host with systemd
  • Service user prometheus

2 · Pre-checks

Read-only diagnostic commands. If any of these don't match expected output, stop and investigate further.

  • · Confirm the target version, e.g. 2.55.x.

3 · Procedure

Execute each step in order. Verify the expected output of a step before moving to the next.

  1. 1Download the binary; verify checksum
  2. 2Create the prometheus user and group
  3. 3Install binary to /usr/local/bin
  4. 4Create /etc/prometheus, /var/lib/prometheus with right perms
  5. 5Drop in /etc/prometheus/prometheus.yml
  6. 6Write /etc/systemd/system/prometheus.service
  7. 7systemctl daemon-reload; systemctl enable --now prometheus

4 · Verification

Confirm the procedure actually fixed the problem.

  • Prometheus /-/ready returns 200
  • Prometheus /-/healthy returns 200
  • Prometheus /api/v1/status/config returns the configuration
  • curl /api/v1/targets returns the configured targets

5 · Rollback

If verification fails, undo the procedure in reverse order.

  • systemctl stop prometheus
  • Restore the previous version if upgrade

6 · Escalation

When the runbook isn't enough, contact:

  • · Escalate to platform team if validation fails twice
  • · Open incident after 30 min if recovery stalls

Purpose

Install Prometheus

When to use this runbook

Use this runbook when the operator needs a guided procedure to handle the situation described above.

Pre-checks

Before starting the procedure, confirm the prerequisites and pre-checks are met. The structured lists are rendered from the frontmatter by the page layout.

Procedure

Follow the steps from the frontmatter procedure steps. The page layout renders the steps as a checklist with copy-to-clipboard affordances.

Verification

After the procedure, the structured verification items from the frontmatter are rendered as a checklist.

Rollback

If the procedure fails or makes things worse, follow the structured rollback steps from the frontmatter.

Escalation

The structured escalation path is rendered from the frontmatter. Use it if the operator cannot complete the procedure safely.

References

  1. Prometheus documentation
  2. Grafana documentation
  3. Loki documentation
  4. Tempo documentation