Prometheus Runbooks
Scrape, query, storage, and alerting failures in Prometheus.
6 scenarios · search and filter below, or jump via the quick nav.
Intermediate3 runbooks
Prometheus scrape 401/403 — metrics endpoint requires authenticationhigh
Prometheus target shows last_error containing HTTP status 401 or 403
PrometheusIntermediateUSE3 causes
1Open runbookPrometheus rules file fails config reload with parse errorhigh
Prometheus config reload fails with 'error parsing YAML' or 'parse error'
PrometheusIntermediate3 causes
2Open runbookPrometheus alert rule not firing — rule evaluated but alert stays inactivecritical
Alert rule shows as 'inactive' or 'pending' but never reaches 'firing' state
PrometheusIntermediateRED3 causes
3Open runbookAdvanced2 runbooks
Prometheus OOM killed — TSDB memory exhaustion from too many seriescritical
Prometheus pod gets OOMKilled (exit code 137) repeatedly
PrometheusAdvancedUSE3 causes
1Open runbookLabel cardinality explosion — series count jumps after a deployment or config changehigh
Active series count jumps by 5-10x after a new deployment
PrometheusAdvancedUSE3 causes
2Open runbook