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Adds distinction between OTel and Prom upfront
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reese-lee authored Mar 13, 2024
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Expand Up @@ -17,9 +17,9 @@ under the [Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF)](https://www.cncf.io/)
umbrella – but what role does each play in observability?

OpenTelemetry (OTel for short), is a vendor-neutral open standard for
instrumenting, generating, collecting, and exporting telemetry data. Prometheus
is a fixture of the observability landscape, widely relied upon for monitoring
and alerting within organizations.
instrumenting, generating, collecting, and exporting telemetry data.
Prometheus is a fixture of the observability landscape, widely relied upon
for monitoring and alerting within organizations.

While both Prometheus and OTel emit metrics, there is a lot to cover on the
differences and similarities, and is out of scope for this article. Rather, we
Expand All @@ -30,26 +30,33 @@ metrics.
* Alternative methods for Prometheus metric collection through OTel-native
options such as the K8s cluster receiver and Kubelet stats receiver.

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We will also do a technical dive into the OTel Operator's Target Allocator (TA)
We'll also do a technical dive into the OTel Operator's Target Allocator (TA)
and learn:
* How it can be used for Prometheus service discovery.
* How it ensures even distribution of Prometheus targets.

## Prometheus and OpenTelemetry
Prometheus encompasses many things, including [a time-series data store,
monitoring and alerting tool](https://prometheus.io/), and data format, known as [Prometheus
## OTel vs Prometheus

Since OTel is primarily focused on the instrumentation part of observability,
it doesn't provide a backend for storing telemetry; you have to forward the
data to a backend vendor for storage, alerting, and querying.

Prometheus, on the other hand, provides a time-series data store you can use
for your metrics, in addition to instrumentation clients. You can view
graphs and charts, set up alerts, and query your data via their web user
interface. It also encompasses a data format, known as [Prometheus
text-based exposition format](https://prometheus.io/docs/instrumenting/exposition_formats/#exposition-formats).

Prometheus _data_ is stored as a dimensional time-series, meaning that the data
has attributes (for example, labels or dimensions) and a timestamp.

The Prometheus _server_ collects Prometheus metrics data from targets defined in a
configuration file. A target is an endpoint that supplies metrics for the
Prometheus tool to store.
Prometheus server to store.

Prometheus is so ubiquitous in the monitoring space that many tools natively
emit metrics in Prometheus format, including [Kubernetes](https://kubernetes.io/docs/concepts/cluster-administration/system-metrics/) and [HashiCorp's Nomad](https://developer.hashicorp.com/nomad/docs/operations/monitoring-nomad). And for those that don’t, there are a number
of vendor- and community-built Prometheus exporters to aggregate and import data
of vendor- and community-built Prometheus clients to aggregate and import data
into Prometheus.

While you can use Prometheus to monitor a variety of infrastructure and
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