---
title: How to federate Scaleway metrics with your own Prometheus
description: Learn how to retrieve your Scaleway metrics with federation and reuse them within your own Prometheus with this step-by-step guide.
tags: federation cockpit metrics monitoring prometheus
dates:
  validation: 2025-07-04
  posted: 2025-07-04
products:
  - cockpit
difficulty: beginner
usecase:
  - migration
ecosystem:
  - scaleway
---
import Requirements from '@macros/iam/requirements.mdx'


In this page, we will show you how to federate your Scaleway metrics using the `/federate` endpoint of your Scaleway data sources with a [Prometheus](https://prometheus.io) configuration. Metrics federation consists of collecting metrics from multiple sources or systems into a central place so you can visualize everything at once.

<Requirements />

 - A Scaleway account logged into the [console](https://console.scaleway.com)
 - [Owner](/iam/concepts/#owner) status or [IAM permissions](/iam/concepts/#permission) allowing you to perform actions in the intended Organization
 - [Created](/cockpit/how-to/create-token/) a Cockpit token with the `query` permission in the same region as the metrics data source
 - A running [Prometheus](https://prometheus.io) instance

<Message type="note">
  The `/federate` endpoint will not be billed during the beta phase. After the beta, the endpoint will incur additional costs.
</Message>

Prometheus federation can be used to gather all your metrics in a unique Prometheus instance, or to downsample different metrics to reduce storage costs in the long run.
Since you have full control over your Prometheus instance, you can also use federation to increase metrics retention.

## Configure your Prometheus

Create a `prometheus.yml` file to configure your Prometheus instance, using the example below.
Make sure you replace `$SCW_DATASOURCE_URL` with the URL of your data source. The URL can be found under the **API URL** section of the [Data sources tab](https://console.scaleway.com/cockpit/dataSource) in the Scaleway console. Replace `$SCW_COCKPIT_TOKEN` with your Cockpit token with the `query` permission.

```yaml
global:
  scrape_interval: 3m

scrape_configs:
  - job_name: 'federate-scaleway-metrics'
    honor_labels: true
    scheme: https
    metrics_path: '/federate'
    http_headers:
      X-Token:
        values:
          - '$SCW_COCKPIT_TOKEN'
    params:
      'match[]':
        - '{__name__=~"instance_.*"}'
        - '{region="fr-par"}'
    static_configs:
      - targets:
        - '$SCW_DATASOURCE_URL'
```

<Message type="important">
  Remove `https://` from the `SCW_DATASOURCE_URL`. Your URL should look like the following: `bc380fc1-9a64-4d51-a560-39c8754207de.metrics.cockpit.fr-par.scw.cloud`.
</Message>

Modify the different `match[]` parameters according to the metrics you want to retrieve. In this example, you will federate:
  - All metrics with a name that starts with `instance_`
  - All metrics with the label `region` with the value `fr-par`

You can also set `honor_labels` to `false` if you do not want to override the different labels set by your Prometheus that conflict with Scaleway metrics label.
For example, with `honor_labels` set to `false`, the Scaleway label `job` will be relabelled as `exported_job` to avoid collision.

## Run your Prometheus instance

Once you have configured your `prometheus.yml` file, you can use docker-compose to run your Prometheus instance with your configuration and start federating Scaleway metrics.

Create a `docker-compose.yml` file and paste the following template into it:
    ```yaml
    services:
      prometheus:
        image: prom/prometheus:latest
        container_name: prometheus
        volumes:
          - ./prometheus.yml:/etc/prometheus/prometheus.yml:ro
        ports:
          - 9090:9090
        command:
          - '--config.file=/etc/prometheus/prometheus.yml'
    ```

[Access your localhost](http://localhost:9090/targets) to see your newly created target federating your Scaleway metrics.

## Monitor your federation volumes

You can monitor the amount of samples federated with the `/federate` endpoint by looking at the `observability_cockpit_federate_exported_sample_total:increase5m` in your Cockpit.
This metric indicates the total volume of exported samples through the federation endpoint over a 5 minutes interval.

1. Click **Cockpit** in the **Monitoring** section of the [console](https://console.scaleway.com/) side menu. The **Cockpit** overview page displays.
2. Click **Open dashboards** to access your Cockpit Grafana.
3. Click the **Toggle menu** icon in the top left corner of your screen, then click **Explore**.
4. In the **Metric** drop-down, select the `observability_cockpit_federate_exported_sample_total:increase5m` metrics and if necessary, update the time range in the top right corner of your screen.

Your metrics should display in the graph.

<Message type="note">
  You can also federate this metrics data source to monitor your volume of federated metrics directly in your Prometheus instance.
</Message>