World map

 

BM

World O1: The Control Room

Prometheus, Grafana, OpenTelemetry: who does what

You will learn: which tool collects, which one draws, which one sends, and how a number travels to your phone.

Checked with Prometheus 3 on 1 Nov 2026

The problem

A friend says: “Grafana: The big screens: it draws dashboards from data kept elsewhere, like Prometheus. keeps all our metrics.” True?

Watch

Tap each point on the timeline.

Follow one number from the till to your phone. Prometheus: The control room's clerk: it collects numbers on a timer, keeps them, and answers PromQL questions. sits in the middle. Tap each step.

Try it

Who does what? Sort each job.

Drag a card into a box. Or tap the card, then tap the box.

        Predict

        OpenTelemetry (OTel): One shared way to make and send metrics, logs and traces. Not a database. sends metrics, logs and traces. Where does it keep them?

        Try it

        Start a real Prometheus on your laptop. Build the command.

        Tap the pieces in the right order.

        …

        Check

        bash
        curl localhost:9090/-/ready
        Prometheus Server is Ready.

        Prometheus answered. The control room is open. This answer is real, from Prometheus 3.13.

        You did it!

        You can now say who collects, who draws and who sends.

        Go deeper (optional)

        Where the story breaks: a real control room has people staring at screens. Here, machines watch, and people are called only by alerts. And Prometheus cannot see the shop. It only knows numbers that apps and exporters share.

        Real rep (needs Docker):

        Real mission

        1. docker run -d --name prom-peek -p 9090:9090 quay.io/prometheus/prometheus:v3.13.5
        2. curl localhost:9090/-/ready
        4. docker rm -f prom-peek

        0 of 4 steps done · Your ticks are saved.