What it does
Grafana Mimir is an open-source time-series database for long-term storage of Prometheus metrics. It is designed for horizontal scaling, high availability, and multi-tenancy. Prometheus or Grafana Alloy can send samples to Mimir, while Grafana provides a familiar way to query and visualize the stored metrics.
Connect a Prometheus source
The quickstart deploys Mimir in monolithic mode, either from a container image or a local binary. It expects Docker and an existing Prometheus server or Grafana Alloy. After starting Mimir, add a remote_write URL such as http://localhost:9009/api/v1/push to the Prometheus configuration and restart Prometheus. This is the documented example path, not a request sent for this research.
Mimir handles storage and querying, not the scraping of application targets. Teams still need a collector such as Prometheus or Grafana Alloy, and a production deployment needs capacity and component planning beyond the local monolithic quickstart. The self-managed project is licensed under AGPLv3; Grafana Cloud is a separate hosted service.
Strengths
- Designed for horizontally scalable, highly available, multi-tenant Prometheus metrics storage.
- The quickstart documents a Docker or binary path and a Prometheus remote_write workflow.
- AGPLv3-licensed source is available in the official repository.
Watch out for
- The quickstart requires Docker and a Prometheus server or Grafana Alloy.
- Mimir is a storage backend, not a scraper or a complete monitoring UI by itself.
Best for
- Teams needing long-term storage for Prometheus metrics across multiple tenants.
- Operators already using Prometheus or Grafana Alloy who need a scalable metrics backend.
Sources
- Grafana Mimir OSS | Prometheus long-term storage (Oct 25, 2026)
- Get started with Grafana Mimir | Grafana Mimir documentation (Oct 25, 2026)
- LICENSE | grafana/mimir (Oct 25, 2026)