What are the differences between Prometheus and Zabbix monitoring systems in terms of functionality and architecture?

Prometheus and Zabbix are popular monitoring systems, but they differ in architecture and functionality:

Prometheus:

• Focused on collecting metrics via a pull model — it polls data sources (exporters).
• Uses its own time-series database for storing metrics.
• Supports a powerful query language PromQL for data analysis.
• Well-suited for dynamic and cloud environments, microservices.
• Easily integrates with Kubernetes.

Zabbix:

• Uses push and pull models, can receive data from agents or directly.
• More traditional system with a centralized server and agents on hosts.
• Supports monitoring not only metrics but also events, logs, service status.
• Has built-in notification and automation mechanisms.
• Suitable for infrastructure, servers, network equipment monitoring.

In short, Prometheus is better for monitoring metrics in modern distributed systems, while Zabbix is for comprehensive infrastructure monitoring with broad data collection and management capabilities.