Prometheus Certified Associate (PCA) Course Overview

To successfully undertake the Prometheus Certified Associate (PCA) course, it is essential that you have a foundational understanding of the following concepts and technologies:

• Basic understanding of Linux/Unix system administration: Familiarity with command-line tools and system monitoring.
• Fundamental knowledge of networking: Comprehension of TCP/IP, HTTP/HTTPS, and basic internet networking.
• Introductory knowledge of system monitoring and observability: Awareness of the importance and purposes of monitoring in IT systems.
• Basic understanding of cloud computing: Knowledge of how cloud services work, with a focus on public clouds like AWS, GCP, or Azure.
• Experience with Docker and containerization: Understanding of container basics and how Docker operates.
• Familiarity with command-line interfaces and scripting: Comfortable with using the command line for various tasks and writing simple scripts in languages like Bash or Python.
• Conceptual knowledge of DevOps practices: Awareness of the principles of continuous integration, continuous delivery, and the role of monitoring in a DevOps environment.
• Willingness to learn new technologies: Openness to acquiring new skills and understanding complex technical concepts.

While prior experience with Prometheus is not a strict requirement, it will be beneficial to have:

• Exposure to basic Prometheus concepts: Having a general idea of what Prometheus is and its role in monitoring.
• Understanding of basic software development or system administration: Insight into how applications are deployed and managed.

Please note that these prerequisites are intended to ensure that you can fully engage with the course content and gain the maximum benefit from the training. The course is designed to be accessible to learners who are new to Prometheus but have a general background in IT and are motivated to expand their monitoring and observability expertise.

Target Audience for Prometheus Certified Associate (PCA)

The Prometheus Certified Associate course is designed for IT professionals focused on monitoring, observability, and system reliability.

• DevOps Engineers

• Site Reliability Engineers (SREs)

• System Administrators

• Infrastructure Monitoring Staff

• Application Developers (focused on the operational aspect of apps)

• Cloud Engineers

• Network Engineers interested in observability

• Technical Architects designing monitoring solutions

• Product Owners managing apps with SLA requirements

• IT Operations Staff

• Technical Project Managers overseeing observability projects

• Data Analysts with a focus on infrastructure performance data

• Security Engineers with an interest in monitoring and alerts

• Support Engineers involved in incident management and uptime monitoring

• Quality Assurance Engineers integrating monitoring into testing processes

• Technical Consultants providing expertise in observability and monitoring tools

Learning Objectives - What you will Learn in this Prometheus Certified Associate (PCA)?

Introduction to Prometheus Certified Associate (PCA) Course Learning Outcomes

The PCA course equips students with foundational knowledge in Prometheus, including its core principles, querying language, and effective use of its toolset for monitoring and alerting.

Learning Objectives and Outcomes:

• Understand the core concepts of observability, including metrics, logs, events, and tracing.
• Learn the differences between push and pull mechanisms and their relevance in Prometheus.
• Gain insights into service discovery and the basics of Service Level Objectives (SLOs), Service Level Agreements (SLAs), and Service Level Indicators (SLIs).
• Comprehend the system architecture of Prometheus and the configuration required for scraping metrics.
• Recognize Prometheus's limitations and how its data model and labels work.
• Master querying with PromQL, selecting and aggregating data, and understanding rates, derivatives, and histograms.
• Acquire skills in instrumenting applications using client libraries and structuring and naming metrics effectively.
• Learn to configure and manage exporters for various services and applications.
• Set up basic dashboards and configure alerting rules for operational insights.
• Understand the functionalities and usage of Alertmanager for managing and routing alerts.