Thanks Prometheus

Prometheus is the name of an open source tool used for gathering metrics. I’m amazed at how appropriate the name is. 

Prometheus is the Greek god who gave fire to humankind. But there’s a lot more to that story. “Prometheus” literally means forethought, as in thinking about something and planning before you act. His brother is Epimethius, which literally means afterthought, as in doing things before you think about it and then thinking about it afterwards and going, “oops!”  Epimethius gave humankind Pandora and her box. Oops.

To the ancient Greeks, pretty much every abstract noun was a god. But they also retained their aspect as that abstract noun. That’s why when Discord wasn’t invited to a party, she sent an apple that she knew would start a fight, and when it did, there was discord, and so Discord really did attend the party.

So when we say that Prometheus gave fire to humankind, we’re also saying that the way you make a fire is through forethought. Forethought is crucial to making a fire. You need dry wood, kindling, a safe place for the fire, and the all illusive spark to start the fire, whether that spark is a flint and steel, two sticks, or a lighter that hasn’t run out of lighter fluid. To assemble these ingredients, you need to think about it before you act. You need to exercise forethought. 

That’s why it makes sense to call a metric gathering system Prometheus. To collect metrics on your system, you have to instrument the different parts. You have to instrument it before the failure that you want to analyse. 

Many applications, like your database or messaging system, have instrumentation built in. (Thank you, app developers, for your forethought). But you still have to wire it in and get it collected and sent to Prometheus. Your application code needs instrumentation added. You have to add something to expose system metrics, and for application specific metrics, you have to add the code to count and log what you’re interested in capturing. And then you need to make sure it gets to Prometheus.

Getting an application instrumented is an intricate process. And above all, it requires forethought. Thank you, Prometheus.

Advertisement

Tags: software development