Linux Monitoring: Prometheus, Zabbix and Core Metrics
Plan Linux monitoring for CPU, memory, load, disk IOPS, filesystems, network, services and logs using Prometheus and Zabbix approaches.
What does this guide solve?
Good monitoring is more than a CPU graph; alerts should connect capacity, errors, latency, service health and user impact.
Host metrics
Beyond CPU utilisation, load average, steal time, context switches and run queue can reveal contention.
For memory, monitor cache, swap, OOM events and application working set.
Disk and filesystem
Monitor latency, IOPS, throughput, queue depth, capacity and inode use together.
Use growth trends and exhaustion forecasts, not only a 100% threshold.
Network and services
Errors/drops, latency, connection counts and retransmits can explain application issues.
Add systemd service, HTTP health, database connectivity and critical-port checks.
Prometheus vs Zabbix
Prometheus is strong for label-oriented time-series and cloud-native systems.
Zabbix is strong for integrated agent/SNMP/template monitoring in traditional infrastructure; choose by operations model.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does high load always mean insufficient CPU?
No. I/O waits and runnable process counts can also increase load average.
What disk threshold should trigger alerts?
Use growth trends and forecasted exhaustion in addition to fixed thresholds.
Should monitoring run separately?
Independent monitoring helps preserve visibility when a monitored host fails.
Sources and technical references
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