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This guide walks through installing a Prometheus server on a Bare-Metal/VM system using the precompiled Linux binary. It covers downloading the release, extracting the archive, inspecting the directory layout, starting the server, and verifying the installation with the web UI and a simple PromQL query.
The image shows an installation instruction for Bare-Metal/VM with a download link for Prometheus and a download icon.

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Overview — high level

  • Download the Prometheus tarball for your OS/architecture from the official downloads page.
  • Extract the tarball to get the prometheus binary, promtool, and prometheus.yml.
  • Start the server with ./prometheus.
  • Visit the web UI at http://<PROMETHEUS_HOST>:9090 and run a basic up query to confirm the server is scraping itself.
Always download the latest stable Prometheus release from the official site: https://prometheus.io/download/. New releases include bug fixes and new features; examples in this guide use older version filenames for illustration only.

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1) Download the Prometheus binary

Visit the Prometheus download page, select the Linux AMD64 (or the correct OS/arch), and copy the link to the tarball. You can fetch it directly on the target machine with wget (paste the copied URL). Example (replace with the URL you copied):
After downloading, verify the tarball exists:

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2) Extract the tarball and inspect contents

Extract the downloaded tarball:
Move into the extracted directory and list its contents:
What each important file is for:
  • prometheus — the Prometheus server executable.
  • prometheus.yml — the main configuration file; defines scrape targets and jobs.
  • promtool — CLI utility to validate configuration and assist with rule files.
  • consoles/ and console_libraries/ — optional UI console templates.

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3) Start the Prometheus server

From the extracted directory run:
You should see logs indicating the server and TSDB started, the configuration file was loaded, and the HTTP server is ready. Example lines:
If running on a remote machine, ensure port 9090 is reachable (open in firewall/security group) before connecting with a browser. Also avoid running Prometheus as root; use a dedicated user for production deployments.

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4) Verify via the web UI and a simple query

Open a browser to the Prometheus web UI:
  • Local: http://localhost:9090
  • Remote: http://<PROMETHEUS_HOST_IP>:9090
The default web expression browser lets you execute PromQL queries. To verify Prometheus is scraping itself, run the simplest query:
You should see a result similar to: up{instance="localhost:9090", job="prometheus"} A value of 1 indicates the target is up; 0 indicates down.

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Visual: Prometheus website and download block

Here’s the Prometheus website download block where you choose the binary and version:
The image is a screenshot of the Prometheus website, featuring information about their open-source monitoring solution and a statement condemning Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
And the releases page listing precompiled binaries and checksums (select the correct OS/arch and copy the link address for wget):
The image shows a download page for Prometheus, listing precompiled binaries for different operating systems and architectures. It includes versions, file sizes, and SHA256 checksums for Prometheus components like alertmanager and others.

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Quick reference table

Follow these steps to get a local Prometheus server running quickly. Once confirmed, you can customize prometheus.yml to add scrape targets and integrate Alertmanager, Grafana, or other monitoring components.

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