Alerting system creates a separate alert for each of those time series, with each alert containing the actual CPU usage value in its {{ $value }} field. groups : - name : cpu-monitoring interval : 1m rules : - record : instance:cpu_usage:avg5m expr : avg by (instance) (rate(cpu_usage[5m])) - alert : HighCPUUsage expr : instance:cpu_usage:avg5m > 80 for : 5m labels : severity : critical annotations : description : "Instance {{ $labels.instance }} has high CPU usage for over 5 minutes." Silencing mutes notifications for specific alerts without changing alert rules or configurations.