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Observabilité · Courses

Thanos: from discovery to expertise

A complete Thanos course: high availability, global view and long-term retention for Prometheus with Sidecar, Query, Store Gateway, Compactor, Ruler and Receive.

8 chapters17 lessonsEN
At your pace, through practice.

By the end of this course you will be able to

  • Archive Prometheus data with Sidecar and object storage
  • Get a deduplicated global view with Query and Query Frontend
  • Configure Compactor, downsampling and retention
  • Deploy Thanos on Kubernetes and monitor it

🎯 Level : Advanced👥 Who it is for : SREs and Prometheus operators aiming for high availability and long-term retention

LEARNING PATH

Course curriculum

0Course overview1 lesson
  1. Assessment quizQuiz · ⏱ 10 min
1Introduction and architecture3 lessons

The limits of Prometheus and the components of Thanos.

  1. Why Thanos?Article · ⏱ 3 min
  2. Prometheus, VictoriaMetrics and ThanosArticle · ⏱ 4 min
  3. Thanos, Mimir or VictoriaMetrics?Article · ⏱ 3 min
2Sidecar and object storage2 lessons

Archive Prometheus data in object storage.

  1. Thanos SidecarArticle · ⏱ 13 min
  2. Lab: Prometheus + Thanos Sidecar + MinIOHands-on lab · ⏱ 50 min · Level 2/5
3Query and Query Frontend2 lessons

A fast, deduplicated global view.

  1. Thanos Query and Query FrontendArticle · ⏱ 9 min
  2. Lab: High availability with two Prometheus instances and Thanos QueryHands-on lab · ⏱ 45 min · Level 3/5
4Store Gateway and Compactor2 lessons

History, downsampling and retention.

  1. Store Gateway and CompactorArticle · ⏱ 8 min
  2. Lab: Store Gateway, Compactor and downsamplingHands-on lab · ⏱ 45 min · Level 3/5
5Ruler and Receive3 lessons

Global rules and remote write ingestion.

  1. Thanos RulerArticle · ⏱ 6 min
  2. Thanos ReceiveArticle · ⏱ 7 min
  3. Lab: Global rules with the Ruler and remote write ingestionHands-on lab · ⏱ 50 min · Level 4/5
6Deployment and operations3 lessons

Kubernetes, monitoring and troubleshooting.

  1. Deploying Thanos on KubernetesArticle · ⏱ 11 min
  2. Operating ThanosArticle · ⏱ 6 min
  3. Final Lab: Thanos on KubernetesHands-on lab · ⏱ 1 h · Level 4/5
7Best practices1 lesson

Recommended practices for running the product in production.

  1. Thanos best practicesArticle · ⏱ 5 min

LEARN BY DOING

Use cases & applications

Long-term metrics retention

Keep years of metrics at low cost thanks to downsampling.

Global multi-cluster view

Query every cluster with a single PromQL query.

Prometheus high availability

Deduplicate two replicas to eliminate data gaps.

Global alerting

Rules evaluated across all clusters with the Ruler.

Recommended prerequisites

Prometheus: From Discovery to Expertise

What next?

Grafana Mimir: from discovery to expertiseVictoriaMetrics: from discovery to expertiseGrafana: From Discovery to Expertise

Frequently asked questions

What is Thanos used for?

It extends Prometheus with high availability, a global multi-cluster view and long-term storage in object storage.

Does Thanos replace Prometheus?

No: Prometheus keeps collecting; Thanos adds components around it (sidecar, query, store...).

Sidecar or Receive?

The sidecar is the simplest model (pull). Receive suits isolated clusters, agent mode and multi-tenancy (push via remote write).

Why only one compactor instance?

Two compactors writing to the same bucket can corrupt the blocks.