# KodeKloud: Beta Courses Prep Course - Prometheus Certified Associate (PCA) Certification

## Prep Course - Prometheus Certified Associate (PCA) Certification

### Introduction

- [Course Introduction](https://notes.kodekloud.com/docs/Prep-Course-Prometheus-Certified-Associate-PCA-Certification/Introduction/Course-Introduction/page.md): Hands-on course teaching Prometheus fundamentals, instrumentation, alerting, scaling, and observability practices with labs, examples, and real world exercises to prepare for certification

### Observability Fundamentals

- [Intro to Observability](https://notes.kodekloud.com/docs/Prep-Course-Prometheus-Certified-Associate-PCA-Certification/Observability-Fundamentals/Intro-to-Observability/page.md): Explains observability concepts, the three pillars logs metrics traces, and how Prometheus fits into metrics-based monitoring for troubleshooting and performance in distributed systems.
- [SLOSLASLI](https://notes.kodekloud.com/docs/Prep-Course-Prometheus-Certified-Associate-PCA-Certification/Observability-Fundamentals/SLOSLASLI/page.md): Explains SLIs, SLOs, and SLAs, how to measure and set targets, and use error budgets to balance feature work with service reliability and contracts

### Prometheus Fundamentals

- [Prometheus Use Case](https://notes.kodekloud.com/docs/Prep-Course-Prometheus-Certified-Associate-PCA-Certification/Prometheus-Fundamentals/Prometheus-Use-Case/page.md): Overview of Prometheus production use cases including metric aggregation across sites, alerting for resource exhaustion, and correlating application metrics to identify performance thresholds.
- [Prometheus Basics](https://notes.kodekloud.com/docs/Prep-Course-Prometheus-Certified-Associate-PCA-Certification/Prometheus-Fundamentals/Prometheus-Basics/page.md): Overview of Prometheus fundamentals including metric collection, TSDB storage, PromQL queries, exporters, and Alertmanager alerting
- [Prometheus Architecture](https://notes.kodekloud.com/docs/Prep-Course-Prometheus-Certified-Associate-PCA-Certification/Prometheus-Fundamentals/Prometheus-Architecture/page.md): Overview of Prometheus monitoring architecture and ecosystem, covering server components, exporters, client libraries, pull versus push models, service discovery, Alertmanager, Pushgateway, PromQL and Grafana.
- [Prometheus Installation](https://notes.kodekloud.com/docs/Prep-Course-Prometheus-Certified-Associate-PCA-Certification/Prometheus-Fundamentals/Prometheus-Installation/page.md): Guide to installing and starting Prometheus on a Linux bare-metal or VM using precompiled binaries, configuring, and verifying with the web UI and a basic PromQL query.
- [Prometheus Installation systemd](https://notes.kodekloud.com/docs/Prep-Course-Prometheus-Certified-Associate-PCA-Certification/Prometheus-Fundamentals/Prometheus-Installation-systemd/page.md): Guide to install and configure Prometheus as a systemd service including user setup, directories, binaries, unit file, and enabling at boot
- [Prometheus Installation Demo](https://notes.kodekloud.com/docs/Prep-Course-Prometheus-Certified-Associate-PCA-Certification/Prometheus-Fundamentals/Prometheus-Installation-Demo/page.md): Guide to install and run Prometheus on a systemd Linux host using a dedicated non-login user, standard directories, and a systemd service unit
- [Node Exporter](https://notes.kodekloud.com/docs/Prep-Course-Prometheus-Certified-Associate-PCA-Certification/Prometheus-Fundamentals/Node-Exporter/page.md): Guide to installing and configuring Prometheus Node Exporter to expose Linux system metrics for Prometheus scraping, including examples, security tips, and service setup.
- [Node Exporter systemd](https://notes.kodekloud.com/docs/Prep-Course-Prometheus-Certified-Associate-PCA-Certification/Prometheus-Fundamentals/Node-Exporter-systemd/page.md): Instructions to install and configure node_exporter as a systemd service, create a dedicated non-login user, enable it at boot, and verify metrics are exposed.
- [Prometheus Configuration](https://notes.kodekloud.com/docs/Prep-Course-Prometheus-Certified-Associate-PCA-Certification/Prometheus-Fundamentals/Prometheus-Configuration/page.md): How to configure Prometheus scrape jobs and global settings, examples, authentication, reloading, and verifying targets in the UI
- [AuthenticationEncryption](https://notes.kodekloud.com/docs/Prep-Course-Prometheus-Certified-Associate-PCA-Certification/Prometheus-Fundamentals/AuthenticationEncryption/page.md): How to secure Prometheus scrapes to Node Exporter using TLS encryption and basic authentication, with configuration steps and best practices for testing and production.
- [Metrics](https://notes.kodekloud.com/docs/Prep-Course-Prometheus-Certified-Associate-PCA-Certification/Prometheus-Fundamentals/Metrics/page.md): Explains Prometheus metrics structure, time series, metric types, labels and metadata with guidance on instrumentation and avoiding high cardinality
- [Exploring Expression Browser](https://notes.kodekloud.com/docs/Prep-Course-Prometheus-Certified-Associate-PCA-Certification/Prometheus-Fundamentals/Exploring-Expression-Browser/page.md): Guide to using the Prometheus expression browser to run PromQL queries, inspect and graph time series, explore status pages, and troubleshoot metrics and configuration.
- [Prometheus in Docker Container](https://notes.kodekloud.com/docs/Prep-Course-Prometheus-Certified-Associate-PCA-Certification/Prometheus-Fundamentals/Prometheus-in-Docker-Container/page.md): Guide to running Prometheus in a Docker container using bind-mounted configuration, exposing port 9090, and handling Docker networking and data persistence
- [Intro to PromTools](https://notes.kodekloud.com/docs/Prep-Course-Prometheus-Certified-Associate-PCA-Certification/Prometheus-Fundamentals/Intro-to-PromTools/page.md): Overview of promtool, the Prometheus command line utility for validating configurations and metrics, running queries, debugging and profiling servers, and testing recording and alerting rules.
- [Monitoring Containers](https://notes.kodekloud.com/docs/Prep-Course-Prometheus-Certified-Associate-PCA-Certification/Prometheus-Fundamentals/Monitoring-Containers/page.md): Guide to monitoring Docker and containers with Prometheus using Docker Engine metrics and cAdvisor for per container resource visibility, setup, scraping, and troubleshooting

### PromQL

- [Introduction](https://notes.kodekloud.com/docs/Prep-Course-Prometheus-Certified-Associate-PCA-Certification/PromQL/Introduction/page.md): Overview of PromQL for Prometheus, covering query concepts, data types (scalar, instant and range vectors), selectors, operators, aggregations, subqueries, histograms and visualization.
- [Selectors Matchers](https://notes.kodekloud.com/docs/Prep-Course-Prometheus-Certified-Associate-PCA-Certification/PromQL/Selectors-Matchers/page.md): Explains PromQL selectors and label matchers for filtering time series using exact, negation and regex operators, combining matchers, and range vector queries.
- [Modifiers](https://notes.kodekloud.com/docs/Prep-Course-Prometheus-Certified-Associate-PCA-Certification/PromQL/Modifiers/page.md): Explains PromQL modifiers offset and @ to query and anchor historical metric values and ranges for debugging, incident analysis, and retrospective inspection.
- [PromQL Demo](https://notes.kodekloud.com/docs/Prep-Course-Prometheus-Certified-Associate-PCA-Certification/PromQL/PromQL-Demo/page.md): Demonstrates PromQL label selectors, regex matching, range vectors, and modifiers like offset and at with practical examples for querying historical and point-in-time metrics.
- [Operators](https://notes.kodekloud.com/docs/Prep-Course-Prometheus-Certified-Associate-PCA-Certification/PromQL/Operators/page.md): Guide to PromQL operators covering arithmetic, comparisons, bool modifier, precedence, and logical set operators with examples for building Prometheus queries and alerting rules
- [Vector Matching](https://notes.kodekloud.com/docs/Prep-Course-Prometheus-Certified-Associate-PCA-Certification/PromQL/Vector-Matching/page.md): Describes PromQL vector matching and modifiers like on ignoring group_left and group_right to control label based pairing and many-to-one or one-to-many arithmetic
- [Aggregation](https://notes.kodekloud.com/docs/Prep-Course-Prometheus-Certified-Associate-PCA-Certification/PromQL/Aggregation/page.md): Explains Prometheus aggregation operators and using by and without to group or exclude labels with examples and practical tips
- [Functions](https://notes.kodekloud.com/docs/Prep-Course-Prometheus-Certified-Associate-PCA-Certification/PromQL/Functions/page.md): Overview of PromQL functions with examples and practical tips covering math, time, conversions, sorting, presence checks, and counter rate calculations such as rate and irate.
- [Subquery](https://notes.kodekloud.com/docs/Prep-Course-Prometheus-Certified-Associate-PCA-Certification/PromQL/Subquery/page.md): Explains Prometheus subqueries, syntax and examples for evaluating instant queries over time windows so range aggregations can operate.
- [HistogramSummary](https://notes.kodekloud.com/docs/Prep-Course-Prometheus-Certified-Associate-PCA-Certification/PromQL/HistogramSummary/page.md): Explains Prometheus histograms and summaries, meaning of _count/_sum/_bucket, PromQL queries, estimating quantiles with histogram_quantile, SLO checks, and bucket design tradeoffs
- [Recording Rules](https://notes.kodekloud.com/docs/Prep-Course-Prometheus-Certified-Associate-PCA-Certification/PromQL/Recording-Rules/page.md): Guide on Prometheus recording rules that evaluate PromQL expressions periodically, store results as new time series, and optimize dashboard queries with examples, configuration, naming and verification steps
- [HTTP API](https://notes.kodekloud.com/docs/Prep-Course-Prometheus-Certified-Associate-PCA-Certification/PromQL/HTTP-API/page.md): Explains Prometheus HTTP API usage including instant and range PromQL queries, endpoints, parameters, examples, and curl usage for automation and integrations.

### Dashboarding & Visualization

- [Introduction](https://notes.kodekloud.com/docs/Prep-Course-Prometheus-Certified-Associate-PCA-Certification/Dashboarding-Visualization/Introduction/page.md): Overview of Prometheus visualization options, comparing built-in tools like the expression browser and console templates with third-party Grafana for creating dashboards, queries, and shared monitoring views.
- [Expression Browser](https://notes.kodekloud.com/docs/Prep-Course-Prometheus-Certified-Associate-PCA-Certification/Dashboarding-Visualization/Expression-Browser/page.md): Prometheus Expression Browser web UI for ad hoc PromQL queries, quick graphs, metric discovery and troubleshooting, not for building persistent dashboards or production monitoring.
- [Console Templates](https://notes.kodekloud.com/docs/Prep-Course-Prometheus-Certified-Associate-PCA-Certification/Dashboarding-Visualization/Console-Templates/page.md): Explains Prometheus console templates for creating custom HTML dashboards using Go templates, embedding PromQL metrics, reusable fragments, and built-in JS helpers to render charts and drilldowns.

### Application Instrumentation

- [Introduction](https://notes.kodekloud.com/docs/Prep-Course-Prometheus-Certified-Associate-PCA-Certification/Application-Instrumentation/Introduction/page.md): Explains how to instrument applications with Prometheus client libraries, metric types, Python examples, exposing metrics endpoint and best practices for naming, labels, and latency measurement
- [Instrumentation basics](https://notes.kodekloud.com/docs/Prep-Course-Prometheus-Certified-Associate-PCA-Certification/Application-Instrumentation/Instrumentation-basics/page.md): Guide to adding Prometheus metrics to a Flask application, creating counters, exposing metrics via separate server or WSGI middleware, and counting requests safely.
- [Labels](https://notes.kodekloud.com/docs/Prep-Course-Prometheus-Certified-Associate-PCA-Certification/Application-Instrumentation/Labels/page.md): Explains using Prometheus labels to track per-path and per-method HTTP request metrics, advantages over per-path metrics, aggregation examples, and warnings about label cardinality.
- [HistogramSummary](https://notes.kodekloud.com/docs/Prep-Course-Prometheus-Certified-Associate-PCA-Certification/Application-Instrumentation/HistogramSummary/page.md): How to instrument a Flask app with Prometheus histograms and summaries to measure and expose per-path per-method request latencies, customize buckets, and choose between histogram and summary
- [Gauge](https://notes.kodekloud.com/docs/Prep-Course-Prometheus-Certified-Associate-PCA-Certification/Application-Instrumentation/Gauge/page.md): Explains Prometheus Gauge metric type, usage patterns, Python prometheus_client examples, API methods and best practices for tracking fluctuating values like in‑progress requests
- [Best Practice](https://notes.kodekloud.com/docs/Prep-Course-Prometheus-Certified-Associate-PCA-Certification/Application-Instrumentation/Best-Practice/page.md): Best practices for naming and instrumenting metrics for Prometheus, covering naming conventions, units, suffixes, and instrumentation guidance for online, offline, and batch systems.

### Service Discovery

- [Introduction](https://notes.kodekloud.com/docs/Prep-Course-Prometheus-Certified-Associate-PCA-Certification/Service-Discovery/Introduction/page.md): Explains Prometheus service discovery methods for automatically finding and managing scrape targets across cloud, Kubernetes, DNS, and file-based integrations, with examples and relabeling guidance.
- [File](https://notes.kodekloud.com/docs/Prep-Course-Prometheus-Certified-Associate-PCA-Certification/Service-Discovery/File/page.md): Explains Prometheus file-based service discovery using JSON or YAML files to define scrape targets and labels, referenced in prometheus.yml and auto-reloaded when files change.
- [AWS](https://notes.kodekloud.com/docs/Prep-Course-Prometheus-Certified-Associate-PCA-Certification/Service-Discovery/AWS/page.md): Guide to configuring Prometheus EC2 service discovery, IAM setup, metadata labels, and validation to automatically discover and scrape metrics from AWS EC2 instances
- [Re Labeling](https://notes.kodekloud.com/docs/Prep-Course-Prometheus-Certified-Associate-PCA-Certification/Service-Discovery/Re-Labeling/page.md): Guide to Prometheus relabeling for filtering, renaming, and normalizing discovery and metric labels pre and post scrape, including common actions, examples, and debugging tips.
- [Re Labeling Demo](https://notes.kodekloud.com/docs/Prep-Course-Prometheus-Certified-Associate-PCA-Certification/Service-Discovery/Re-Labeling-Demo/page.md): Demonstrates Prometheus relabeling to filter scrape targets and transform metrics and labels using relabel_configs and metric_relabel_configs with examples and tips

### Push Gateway

- [Introduction](https://notes.kodekloud.com/docs/Prep-Course-Prometheus-Certified-Associate-PCA-Certification/Push-Gateway/Introduction/page.md): Explains Prometheus Pushgateway for capturing and exposing metrics from short lived batch jobs, including usage, endpoints, examples, and best practices.
- [Installation](https://notes.kodekloud.com/docs/Prep-Course-Prometheus-Certified-Associate-PCA-Certification/Push-Gateway/Installation/page.md): Installing and running Prometheus Pushgateway, configuring systemd and Prometheus to scrape it, usage for short-lived or batch jobs, verification and troubleshooting
- [Pushing Metrics](https://notes.kodekloud.com/docs/Prep-Course-Prometheus-Certified-Associate-PCA-Certification/Push-Gateway/Pushing-Metrics/page.md): Guide to pushing Prometheus metrics to a Pushgateway via HTTP, covering URL grouping keys, curl examples, and POST PUT DELETE semantics for updating or deleting metric groups
- [Client Library](https://notes.kodekloud.com/docs/Prep-Course-Prometheus-Certified-Associate-PCA-Certification/Push-Gateway/Client-Library/page.md): Guide to using the Python prometheus_client to push, merge, and delete metrics to Prometheus Pushgateway with examples and registry usage

### Alerting

- [Introduction](https://notes.kodekloud.com/docs/Prep-Course-Prometheus-Certified-Associate-PCA-Certification/Alerting/Introduction/page.md): Explains Prometheus alerting using PromQL, alert rule structure, lifecycle states, and Alertmanager's role in grouping routing and delivering notifications.
- [Labels Annotations](https://notes.kodekloud.com/docs/Prep-Course-Prometheus-Certified-Associate-PCA-Certification/Alerting/Labels-Annotations/page.md): Explains Prometheus alert labels versus annotations and best practices for routing, grouping, and human readable notification content
- [Alertmanager Architecture](https://notes.kodekloud.com/docs/Prep-Course-Prometheus-Certified-Associate-PCA-Certification/Alerting/Alertmanager-Architecture/page.md): Overview of Alertmanager architecture and alert processing flow from Prometheus including grouping, silences, inhibition, routing, and notification delivery to integrations
- [Alertmanager Installation](https://notes.kodekloud.com/docs/Prep-Course-Prometheus-Certified-Associate-PCA-Certification/Alerting/Alertmanager-Installation/page.md): Guide to download, install, run, and configure Alertmanager and integrate it with Prometheus for alert delivery and basic troubleshooting.
- [Alertmanager Installation Systemd](https://notes.kodekloud.com/docs/Prep-Course-Prometheus-Certified-Associate-PCA-Certification/Alerting/Alertmanager-Installation-Systemd/page.md): Guide to installing and configuring Prometheus Alertmanager as a systemd service, covering download, user and directory setup, binary installation, service unit creation, and startup verification.
- [Configuration](https://notes.kodekloud.com/docs/Prep-Course-Prometheus-Certified-Associate-PCA-Certification/Alerting/Configuration/page.md): Guide to Alertmanager configuration explaining routing trees, matchers, receivers, grouping, and reload practices for delivering alerts to appropriate notification channels.
- [Receivers Notifiers](https://notes.kodekloud.com/docs/Prep-Course-Prometheus-Certified-Associate-PCA-Certification/Alerting/Receivers-Notifiers/page.md): Explains how Alertmanager receivers and notifiers configure and group alerts, format notifications with templates, and integrate with platforms like Slack, email, and VictorOps.
- [Alertmanager Demo](https://notes.kodekloud.com/docs/Prep-Course-Prometheus-Certified-Associate-PCA-Certification/Alerting/Alertmanager-Demo/page.md): Guide to creating Prometheus alerting rules and configuring Alertmanager to route and group alerts with Slack notifications and practical examples
- [Silences](https://notes.kodekloud.com/docs/Prep-Course-Prometheus-Certified-Associate-PCA-Certification/Alerting/Silences/page.md): Explains Alertmanager silences, and how to create, configure, and manage label-based notification suppressions during maintenance while alerts still fire and remain visible.

### Monitoring Kubernetes

- [Introduction](https://notes.kodekloud.com/docs/Prep-Course-Prometheus-Certified-Associate-PCA-Certification/Monitoring-Kubernetes/Introduction/page.md): Guide to monitoring Kubernetes with Prometheus, using Helm and kube-prometheus-stack including Prometheus Operator, ServiceMonitor, PodMonitor, kube-state-metrics and Node Exporter
- [Installing Helm Chart](https://notes.kodekloud.com/docs/Prep-Course-Prometheus-Certified-Associate-PCA-Certification/Monitoring-Kubernetes/Installing-Helm-Chart/page.md): Guide to install Helm and deploy kube-prometheus-stack to provision Prometheus Alertmanager and observability components on a Kubernetes cluster, including installation, configuration, verification, and uninstallation.
- [Prometheus Chart Overview](https://notes.kodekloud.com/docs/Prep-Course-Prometheus-Certified-Associate-PCA-Certification/Monitoring-Kubernetes/Prometheus-Chart-Overview/page.md): Guide to inspecting kube-prometheus-stack Helm chart resources, mapping created Kubernetes objects to Prometheus components and extracting generated configuration and rule files
- [Connecting To Prometheus](https://notes.kodekloud.com/docs/Prep-Course-Prometheus-Certified-Associate-PCA-Certification/Monitoring-Kubernetes/Connecting-To-Prometheus/page.md): Guide for accessing and exposing a Prometheus server in Kubernetes, covering service inspection, port-forward, NodePort, LoadBalancer, Ingress, and security best practices.
- [Prometheus Configuration](https://notes.kodekloud.com/docs/Prep-Course-Prometheus-Certified-Associate-PCA-Certification/Monitoring-Kubernetes/Prometheus-Configuration/page.md): Explains Helm installed Prometheus configuration, Kubernetes service discovery roles, and relabeling rules used to select scrape targets and configure TLS and authorization.
- [Deploy Demo Application](https://notes.kodekloud.com/docs/Prep-Course-Prometheus-Certified-Associate-PCA-Certification/Monitoring-Kubernetes/Deploy-Demo-Application/page.md): Guide to containerizing and deploying a Node.js app instrumented with swagger-stats, creating Kubernetes manifests, and configuring Prometheus Operator scraping for metrics
- [Additional Scrape Configs](https://notes.kodekloud.com/docs/Prep-Course-Prometheus-Certified-Associate-PCA-Certification/Monitoring-Kubernetes/Additional-Scrape-Configs/page.md): Explains how to add Prometheus scrape jobs via kube-prometheus-stack additionalScrapeConfigs and recommends using ServiceMonitors as the preferred operator native approach
- [Service Monitors](https://notes.kodekloud.com/docs/Prep-Course-Prometheus-Certified-Associate-PCA-Certification/Monitoring-Kubernetes/Service-Monitors/page.md): Explains using ServiceMonitor CRD with Prometheus Operator to declaratively configure Kubernetes scrape targets, selectors, and resulting Prometheus scrape configs and relabeling.
- [Adding Rules](https://notes.kodekloud.com/docs/Prep-Course-Prometheus-Certified-Associate-PCA-Certification/Monitoring-Kubernetes/Adding-Rules/page.md): Using the Prometheus Operator PrometheusRule CRD to define, apply, and troubleshoot Prometheus alerting and recording rules in Kubernetes.
- [Alertmanager Rules](https://notes.kodekloud.com/docs/Prep-Course-Prometheus-Certified-Associate-PCA-Certification/Monitoring-Kubernetes/Alertmanager-Rules/page.md): Guide for creating AlertmanagerConfig CRDs, configuring Helm selectors so Alertmanager discovers them, converting alertmanager.yml to CRD syntax, applying examples and troubleshooting

### Conclusion

- [Conclusion](https://notes.kodekloud.com/docs/Prep-Course-Prometheus-Certified-Associate-PCA-Certification/Conclusion/Conclusion/page.md): Summary of a Prometheus course covering architecture, metric types, PromQL, deployment, alerting, best practices, and practical next steps for instrumenting services and configuring monitoring
- [Registering for Exam](https://notes.kodekloud.com/docs/Prep-Course-Prometheus-Certified-Associate-PCA-Certification/Conclusion/Registering-for-Exam/page.md): Instructions for registering, scheduling, and preparing for the Prometheus Certified Associate exam on the Linux Foundation Training site

### Scaling & Long Term Storage

- [Long Term Storage](https://notes.kodekloud.com/docs/Prep-Course-Prometheus-Certified-Associate-PCA-Certification/Scaling-Long-Term-Storage/Long-Term-Storage/page.md): Guide to Prometheus long-term storage covering local TSDB structure, retention tuning, capacity planning, remote read/write, and using long-term systems like Thanos and Grafana Mimir.
- [Thanos](https://notes.kodekloud.com/docs/Prep-Course-Prometheus-Certified-Associate-PCA-Certification/Scaling-Long-Term-Storage/Thanos/page.md): Describes Thanos roles and benefits with Prometheus, enabling unified querying, HA deduplication, and cost effective long term metric storage to object stores
- [Scaling Prometheus](https://notes.kodekloud.com/docs/Prep-Course-Prometheus-Certified-Associate-PCA-Certification/Scaling-Long-Term-Storage/Scaling-Prometheus/page.md): Explains strategies to scale Prometheus and achieve high availability including vertical and horizontal scaling, sharding, federation, aggregate metrics and Thanos integration.
- [Horizontal Sharding](https://notes.kodekloud.com/docs/Prep-Course-Prometheus-Certified-Associate-PCA-Certification/Scaling-Long-Term-Storage/Horizontal-Sharding/page.md): Guide to horizontally sharding Prometheus scrape jobs using hashmod relabeling to distribute targets across multiple instances.
- [Federation](https://notes.kodekloud.com/docs/Prep-Course-Prometheus-Certified-Associate-PCA-Certification/Scaling-Long-Term-Storage/Federation/page.md): Explains Prometheus federation and recommends aggregating local metrics with recording rules and datacenter labels to avoid high cardinality and collisions while providing a global view