LibreNMS vs Prometheus: What are the differences?

Key Differences between LibreNMS and Prometheus

Introduction

LibreNMS and Prometheus are both popular network monitoring tools that provide valuable insights into network performance. However, there are key differences that set them apart.

1. Data Collection Method: LibreNMS primarily uses SNMP (Simple Network Management Protocol) to collect data from network devices. It supports various SNMP versions and can fetch a wide range of metrics. On the other hand, Prometheus uses its own exporter model, where exporters need to be installed on the devices to scrape data. Prometheus also supports additional data collection methods like SNMP, but its primary focus is on the exporter model.

2. Data Storage: LibreNMS stores collected data in a traditional relational database (such as MySQL or PostgreSQL) for long-term retention. It provides efficient querying capabilities for historical data analysis. Meanwhile, Prometheus uses a time-series database specifically designed for monitoring purposes. This database is optimized for scalability and efficient querying of time-series data.

3. Dynamic Service Discovery: Prometheus has built-in support for dynamic service discovery, allowing it to automatically discover and monitor new services without manual configuration. It can discover services through a variety of methods such as DNS, Kubernetes, or file-based configurations. On the other hand, LibreNMS relies on manual configuration to add new devices to the monitoring system.

4. Alerting: Prometheus offers a powerful built-in alerting system that allows users to define alert rules based on specific metrics. It supports various notification methods like email, PagerDuty, or Slack for alert delivery. LibreNMS also has an alerting system, but it relies on external tools like Nagios or Icinga for alerting functionality.

5. Metrics and Visualization: LibreNMS provides comprehensive built-in network analytics with various graphs and charts to visualize device and network performance. Its interface includes a wide range of predefined metrics and dashboards. Prometheus, on the other hand, focuses on time-series data and allows users to define custom metrics with its flexible query language (PromQL). It provides a basic web interface for visualization but encourages integration with external visualization tools like Grafana.

6. Community Support: Both LibreNMS and Prometheus have active and supportive communities, providing a wealth of resources, documentation, and community-developed plugins or exporters. However, Prometheus has gained significant popularity and has a larger community presence, which leads to faster development, regular updates, and a wider range of integrations.

In summary, LibreNMS primarily uses SNMP for data collection, stores data in a traditional database, relies on manual device configuration, offers alerting through external tools, provides predefined metrics and visualization, and has an active community. Prometheus uses its exporter model for data collection, uses a time-series database, supports dynamic service discovery, offers a built-in alerting system, allows custom metrics and visualization, and has a larger and more active community.