Monitorix vs Prometheus: What are the differences?

## Introduction
Monitorix and Prometheus are two popular monitoring tools used in the IT industry. While both tools serve the purpose of monitoring systems and applications, they have distinct differences that set them apart.

1. **Data Collection Method**: Monitorix primarily collects data through system logs and files, making it easier to set up and use for beginners. On the other hand, Prometheus uses a pull-based approach where it scrapes metrics from instrumented jobs, offering more flexibility and control over data collection.

2. **Alerting Capabilities**: Monitorix lacks native alerting capabilities and relies on external tools for setting up alerts. In contrast, Prometheus comes with built-in alerting functionalities that allow users to define and trigger alerts based on specified conditions, enhancing proactive monitoring.

3. **Scaling**: When it comes to scaling, Prometheus is designed to handle large-scale environments with a high volume of metrics more efficiently compared to Monitorix. Its distributed architecture and ability to handle federated setups make it a better choice for scaling monitoring needs.

4. **Data Visualization**: Monitorix offers basic graphing and visualization options for monitoring data, suitable for simple monitoring requirements. On the other hand, Prometheus integrates seamlessly with Grafana, a popular visualization tool, providing more advanced and customizable dashboarding capabilities.

5. **Community Support**: Prometheus has a larger and more active community compared to Monitorix, resulting in frequent updates, better documentation, and a wide range of plugins and integrations available for users, making it easier to find solutions to common issues and challenges. 

6. **Storage Backend**: Monitorix stores its data in plain text files, which can be less efficient for large-scale deployments with extensive data retention requirements. In contrast, Prometheus uses a time-series database for data storage, offering better performance and scalability for handling vast amounts of metrics over time.

In Summary, the key differences between Monitorix and Prometheus lie in their data collection methods, alerting capabilities, scalability, data visualization options, community support, and storage backends, catering to different monitoring needs and preferences in the IT industry.