What Is It?
Monitoring Service is a centralized, IONOS-managed, cloud-agnostic platform for ingesting, storing, aggregating, and visualizing Prometheus-compatible metrics from any environment. The service accepts push-based metric ingestion via per-pipeline HTTP endpoints secured with unique API keys, supporting host-based metrics (CPU, memory, disk, network), application metrics (response time, error rates, throughput), and custom business or IoT metrics. All monitoring pipelines share a unified Grafana instance for dashboards, alerting, and role-based access control, enabling comprehensive observability across cloud, on-premise, and hybrid infrastructure.
Quick Facts
| Aspect | Details |
|---|---|
| Type | Prometheus-compatible metric aggregation platform |
| Deployment Scope | Cloud-agnostic, on-premise, hybrid, IoT |
| Ingestion Method | Push-based via HTTP endpoints |
| Supported Agents | Prometheus, Grafana Agent, OpenTelemetry, Fluent Bit |
| Metric Types | Host-based, application, network, server-pool, external-dependency, business-level |
| Visualization | Shared unified Grafana instance across all pipelines |
| Security | TLS transport, server-side and client-side encryption at rest, per-tenant data partitioning |
| Access Control | Role-based access control (RBAC) with sub-user support |
| Pricing Model | Per 1 million samples |
Supported Metric Types
| Category | Examples |
|---|---|
| Host-based | CPU, memory, disk I/O, network traffic, process counts |
| Application | Error/success rates, latency, resource usage, throughput |
| Network & Connectivity | Latency, packet loss, bandwidth utilization |
| Server-Pool | Load balancer health, pool capacity |
| External Dependency | API response times, third-party service availability |
| Business Metrics | Sign-ups, renewals, revenue, churn rate |
What You Can Do
Push Metrics from Any Environment
Configure Prometheus-compatible agents (Grafana Agent, OpenTelemetry, or Fluent Bit via compatible integrations) to push metrics to per-pipeline HTTP endpoints. The service is cloud-agnostic, supporting IONOS Cloud VMs, other cloud providers, on-premise infrastructure, IoT devices, and bare-metal servers.
Create Custom Dashboards
Build Grafana dashboards with full customization for metric visualization, time-series analysis, and operational insights. All pipelines share a unified Grafana instance accessible via the same endpoint URL.
Define Custom Alerts
Set alert rules based on metric thresholds, patterns, or anomalies directly in Grafana. Configure notification channels (email, Slack, PagerDuty) for proactive incident response.
Monitor Application Performance
Track application-level metrics including response times, error rates, throughput, and resource consumption. Visualize performance trends and identify bottlenecks in real-time.
Manage Access Control
Implement role-based access control (RBAC) by creating sub-users with specific permissions and Grafana roles. Sub-users see only pipelines they are created themselves, maintaining security and data isolation.
Scale Metric Ingestion
Handle large volumes of metrics with scalable architecture that adjusts to ingestion demands. The service supports high-performance data processing for fast querying and aggregation.
Secure Metric Transmission
All metric data travels over TLS-encrypted connections. Each pipeline uses a unique API key for authentication, and data is encrypted at rest with both server-side and client-side protection.
Retention Policies
Retention is configurable and has a direct linear impact on storage cost (halving retention halves the storage bill). The specific default and allowed retention values are not published in the product documentation; consult the current documentation for available settings.
Best For
| Scenario | Why It Fits |
|---|---|
| Application performance monitoring | Tracks response time, error rates, throughput, and business metrics with custom Grafana dashboards |
| Multi-cloud or hybrid infrastructure | Cloud-agnostic design works with any Prometheus-compatible agent across IONOS, AWS, Azure, GCP, or on-premise |
| Security and compliance monitoring | Custom metrics for failed logins, suspicious activity, and audit trails. |
| DevOps and CI/CD pipelines | Monitors build times, deployment success rates, test coverage, and pipeline health |
| IoT device fleet management | Ingests metrics from thousands of devices (battery level, connectivity status, sensor data) via Grafana Agent |
| Business metric tracking | Captures sign-ups, renewals, revenue, churn rate for business intelligence dashboards |
| Network-wide monitoring | Collects latency, packet loss, bandwidth utilization for ISPs or large data-center networks |
| Future-proof observability | Actively developed and maintained, recommended for all new projects requiring advanced monitoring |
Consider Alternatives If
| If You Need... | Consider | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Basic VM health checks only on IONOS Cloud | Monitoring as a Service (Legacy) | Free, fully managed out-of-the-box CPU/disk/network metrics (memory metrics not available); limited to IONOS VMs and receives limited support and updates starting September 1, 2024 |
| Zero-ops proof-of-concept | Monitoring as a Service (Legacy) | No agent installation required; managed by IONOS but limited metric scope and short retention |
| Short-term test environment | Monitoring as a Service (Legacy) | Free tier with basic metrics; note that MaaS receives only limited support and updates starting September 1, 2024 |
Key Considerations
Billing & Costs
- Main billing: Per 1 million samples ingested
- Sampling rate: Higher frequency metric collection increases sample count and costs
- Grafana dashboards: Included at no additional cost per pipeline
Limitations
- Requires user-managed agent installation and configuration (Prometheus, Grafana Agent, OpenTelemetry, etc.)
- Billing based on sample count requires monitoring ingestion volumes to control costs
- High-frequency metrics from large fleets can generate significant sample volumes
- Retention is configurable; longer retention increases storage cost proportionally (the default and allowed values are not published in the product documentation)
- API key management is user responsibility (secure storage and rotation)
- All pipelines share a single Grafana instance; cross-pipeline data is available in the same unified interface
Management Options
- REST API for pipeline creation, configuration, and management
- Grafana UI for dashboard creation, alerting, and metric visualization
- Prometheus-compatible agent configuration files (Grafana Agent, OpenTelemetry, Fluent Bit)
- Sub-user management for delegated access control
- RBAC configuration for role-based permissions