# Silencing alert notifications for Prometheus data sources
<a name="v9-alerting-silences"></a>

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This documentation topic is designed for Grafana workspaces that support **Grafana version 9.x**.  
For Grafana workspaces that support Grafana version 12.x, see [Working in Grafana version 12](using-grafana-v12.md).  
For Grafana workspaces that support Grafana version 10.x, see [Working in Grafana version 10](using-grafana-v10.md).  
For Grafana workspaces that support Grafana version 8.x, see [Working in Grafana version 8](using-grafana-v8.md).

For external Alert manager data sources (including Amazon Managed Service for Prometheus), you can suppress alert notifications with a *silence*. A silence only stops notifications from being created: Silences do not prevent alert rules from being evaluated, and they do not stop alerting instances from being shown in the user interface. When you silence an alert, you specify a window of time for it to be suppressed.

You can configure silences for an external Alertmanager data source.

**Note**  
To suppress alert notifications at regular time intervals, or for other data sources, (for example, during regular maintenance periods), use [Mute timings](v9-alerting-notification-muting.md) rather than silences.

**To add a silence**

1. From your Grafana console, in the Grafana menu, choose the **Alerting** (bell) icon to open the **Alerting** page.

1. Choose **Silences** to open a page listing existing [Working with contact points](v9-alerting-contact-points.md).

1. Choose the external Alertmanager from the **Alertmanager** dropdown.

1. Select **Add Silence**.

1. Select the start and end date in **Silence start and end** to indicate when the silence should go into effect and when it should end.

   As an alternative to setting an end time, in **Duration**, specify how long the silence is enforced. This automatically updates the end time in the **Silence start and end** field.

1. In the **Name** and **Value** fields, enter one or more *Matching Labels*. Matchers determine which rules the silence applies to. Label matching is discussed in more detail following this procedure.

1. Optionally, add a **Comment**, or modify the **Creator** to set the owner of the silence.

1. Choose **Create** to create the silence.

You can edit an existing silence by choosing the **Edit** icon (pen).

**Label matching for alert suppression**

When you create a silence, you create a set of *matching labels* as part of the silence. This is a set of rules about labels that must match for the alert to be suppressed. The matching labels consist of three parts:
+ **Label** – The name of the label to match. It must exactly match the label name of the alert.
+ **Operator** – The operator used to compare the label value with the matching label value. The available operators are:
  + `=` Select labels whose value exactly matches the provided string.
  + `!=` Select labels whose value does not match the provided string.
  + `=~` Select labels whose value match the regex interpreted value of the provided string (the provided string is interpreted as a regular expression).
  + `!=` Select labels that do not match the provided regular expression.
+ **Value** – The value to match the label value to. It can match as a string or as a regular expression, depending on the operator chosen.

A silence ends at the indicated end date, but you can manually end the suppression at any time.

**To end a silence manually**

1. In the **Alerting** page, choose **Silences** to view the list of existing silences.

1. Select the silence that you want to end, and choose **Unsilence**. This ends the alert suppression.
**Note**  
Unsilencing ends the alert suppression, as if the end time was set for the current time. Silences that have ended (automatically or manually) are retained and listed for five days. You cannot remove a silence from the list manually.

**Creating a link to the silence creation form**

You can create a URL to the silence creation form with details already filled in. Operators can use this to suppress an alarm quickly during an operational event.

When creating a link to a silence form, use a `matchers` query parameter to specify the matching labels, and a `comment` query parameter to specify a comment. The `matchers` parameter requires one or more values in the form `[label][operator][value]`, separated by commas.

**Example URL**

To link to a silence form, with matching labels `severity=critical` and `cluster!~europe-.*`, with a comment that says `Silencing critical EU alerts`, use a URL like the following. Replace *mygrafana* with the hostname of your Grafana instance.

```
https://mygrafana/alerting/silence/new?matchers=severity%3Dcritical%2Ccluster!~europe-*&comment=Silence%20critical%20EU%20alert
```

To link to a new silence page for an external Alertmanager, add an `alertmanager` query parameter with the Alertmanage data source name, such as `alertmanager=myAlertmanagerdatasource`.