Prometheus Prometheus not sending alerts to Alertmanager

Misconfigured Alertmanager integration or network issues.

Understanding Prometheus and Its Purpose

Prometheus is an open-source systems monitoring and alerting toolkit originally built at SoundCloud. It is now a standalone open source project and maintained independently of any company. Prometheus is designed to collect metrics from configured targets at given intervals, evaluate rule expressions, display the results, and trigger alerts if some condition is observed to be true.

Identifying the Symptom: Alerts Not Being Sent

One common issue users encounter is that Prometheus is not sending alerts to Alertmanager. This can be frustrating, especially when you rely on alerts to monitor the health and performance of your systems. The symptom is typically observed when expected alerts do not appear in Alertmanager, or when there is no evidence of alert notifications being sent.

Exploring the Issue: Misconfigured Integration or Network Problems

The root cause of this issue often lies in a misconfigured Alertmanager integration or network connectivity problems. Prometheus relies on a properly configured Alertmanager to route alerts to the correct channels, such as email, Slack, or PagerDuty. If the configuration is incorrect or if there are network issues, alerts may not be sent as expected.

Common Misconfigurations

  • Incorrect Alertmanager URL in Prometheus configuration.
  • Missing or incorrect alerting rules.
  • Network policies or firewalls blocking traffic between Prometheus and Alertmanager.

Network Connectivity Issues

Ensure that Prometheus can reach Alertmanager over the network. This may involve checking firewall rules, network policies, and ensuring that both services are running on the expected ports.

Steps to Resolve the Issue

To resolve the issue of Prometheus not sending alerts to Alertmanager, follow these steps:

Step 1: Verify Alertmanager Configuration

Check the Prometheus configuration file (usually prometheus.yml) to ensure that the Alertmanager URL is correctly specified. It should look something like this:

alerting:
alertmanagers:
- static_configs:
- targets:
- 'alertmanager:9093'

Make sure the URL is correct and that Alertmanager is accessible at the specified address and port.

Step 2: Check Alerting Rules

Ensure that your alerting rules are correctly defined and that they match the conditions you expect to trigger alerts. You can test your alerting rules using the Prometheus expression browser or the Prometheus Query Language (PromQL).

Step 3: Test Network Connectivity

Use tools like curl or telnet to test connectivity between Prometheus and Alertmanager. For example:

curl http://alertmanager:9093/api/v1/status

This command should return a status response from Alertmanager. If it doesn't, investigate network issues or service availability.

Step 4: Review Logs

Check the logs of both Prometheus and Alertmanager for any error messages or warnings that might indicate what is going wrong. Logs can provide valuable insights into misconfigurations or connectivity issues.

Additional Resources

For more detailed information on configuring Prometheus and Alertmanager, refer to the official Prometheus documentation and Alertmanager documentation. These resources provide comprehensive guides and examples to help you set up and troubleshoot your monitoring and alerting systems effectively.

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