Prometheus has become the go-to standard for metrics-based monitoring, but as environments grow in complexity and scale, teams often find themselves hitting its operational limits, especially around cardinality and long-term storage. This talk explores how VictoriaMetrics builds on Prometheus fundamentals to offer a more scalable and efficient alternative for teams managing high-ingestion workloads and demanding retention needs, without abandoning the familiar Prometheus ecosystem. I’ll dive into how VictoriaMetrics supports Prometheus-compatible scrape configurations and exporters, allowing seamless integration with existing workflows. The session will showcase practical strategies for setting up and tuning scrape jobs, managing cardinality through label analysis and relabeling, and using VictoriaMetrics’ UI and tools to gain insight into metric usage patterns. This talk is tailored for advanced users eager to push the boundaries of Prometheus-based observability, demonstrating how the core philosophy of Prometheus can be extended and elevated through the integration of high-performance systems like VictoriaMetrics.