VictoriaMetrics/docs

VictoriaMetrics

VictoriaMetrics is a fast, cost-effective and scalable monitoring solution and time series database.

VictoriaMetrics is available in binary releases, Docker images, Snap packages and source code. Just download the latest version of VictoriaMetrics and follow these instructions.

The cluster version of VictoriaMetrics is available here.

Learn more about key concepts of VictoriaMetrics and follow the quick start guide for a better experience.

Contact us if you need enterprise support for VictoriaMetrics. See features available in enterprise package. Enterprise binaries can be downloaded and evaluated for free from the releases page.

VictoriaMetrics is developed at a fast pace, so it is recommended periodically checking the CHANGELOG and performing regular upgrades.

VictoriaMetrics has achieved security certifications for Database Software Development and Software-Based Monitoring Services. We apply strict security measures in everything we do. See our Security page for more details.

Prominent features

VictoriaMetrics has the following prominent features:

• It can be used as long-term storage for Prometheus. See these docs for details.
• It can be used as a drop-in replacement for Prometheus in Grafana, because it supports Prometheus querying API.
• It can be used as a drop-in replacement for Graphite in Grafana, because it supports Graphite API.
• It features easy setup and operation:
  • VictoriaMetrics consists of a single small executable without external dependencies.
  • All the configuration is done via explicit command-line flags with reasonable defaults.
  • All the data is stored in a single directory pointed by -storageDataPath command-line flag.
  • Easy and fast backups from instant snapshots to S3 or GCS can be done with vmbackup / vmrestore tools. See this article for more details.
• It implements PromQL-based query language - MetricsQL, which provides improved functionality on top of PromQL.
• It provides global query view. Multiple Prometheus instances or any other data sources may ingest data into VictoriaMetrics. Later this data may be queried via a single query.
• It provides high performance and good vertical and horizontal scalability for both data ingestion and data querying. It outperforms InfluxDB and TimescaleDB by up to 20x.
• It uses 10x less RAM than InfluxDB and up to 7x less RAM than Prometheus, Thanos or Cortex when dealing with millions of unique time series (aka high cardinality).
• It is optimized for time series with high churn rate.
• It provides high data compression, so up to 70x more data points may be crammed into limited storage comparing to TimescaleDB and up to 7x less storage space is required compared to Prometheus, Thanos or Cortex.
• It is optimized for storage with high-latency IO and low IOPS (HDD and network storage in AWS, Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure, etc). See disk IO graphs from these benchmarks.
• A single-node VictoriaMetrics may substitute moderately sized clusters built with competing solutions such as Thanos, M3DB, Cortex, InfluxDB or TimescaleDB. See vertical scalability benchmarks, comparing Thanos to VictoriaMetrics cluster and Remote Write Storage Wars talk from PromCon 2019.
• It protects the storage from data corruption on unclean shutdown (i.e. OOM, hardware reset or kill -9) thanks to the storage architecture.
• It supports metrics' scraping, ingestion and backfilling via the following protocols:
  • Metrics scraping from Prometheus exporters.
  • Prometheus remote write API.
  • Prometheus exposition format.
  • InfluxDB line protocol over HTTP, TCP and UDP.
  • Graphite plaintext protocol with tags.
  • OpenTSDB put message.
  • HTTP OpenTSDB /api/put requests.
  • JSON line format.
  • Arbitrary CSV data.
  • Native binary format.
  • DataDog agent or DogStatsD.
• It supports metrics relabeling.
• It can deal with high cardinality issues and high churn rate issues via series limiter.
• It ideally works with big amounts of time series data from APM, Kubernetes, IoT sensors, connected cars, industrial telemetry, financial data and various Enterprise workloads.
• It has open source cluster version.
• It can store data on NFS-based storages such as Amazon EFS and Google Filestore.

See also various Articles about VictoriaMetrics.

Case studies and talks

Case studies:

• AbiosGaming
• adidas
• Adsterra
• ARNES
• Brandwatch
• CERN
• COLOPL
• Dreamteam
• Fly.io
• German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence
• Grammarly
• Groove X
• Idealo.de
• MHI Vestas Offshore Wind
• Razorpay
• Percona
• Sensedia
• Smarkets
• Synthesio
• Wedos.com
• Wix.com
• Zerodha
• zhihu

See also articles and slides about VictoriaMetrics from our users

Operation

How to start VictoriaMetrics

Just download VictoriaMetrics executable or Docker image and start it with the desired command-line flags. See also QuickStart guide for additional information.

The following command-line flags are used the most:

• -storageDataPath - VictoriaMetrics stores all the data in this directory. Default path is victoria-metrics-data in the current working directory.
• -retentionPeriod - retention for stored data. Older data is automatically deleted. Default retention is 1 month. See the Retention section for more details.

Other flags have good enough default values, so set them only if you really need this. Pass -help to see all the available flags with description and default values.

The following docs may be useful during initial VictoriaMetrics setup:

• How to set up scraping of Prometheus-compatible targets
• How to ingest data to VictoriaMetrics
• How to set up Prometheus to write data to VictoriaMetrics
• How to query VictoriaMetrics via Grafana
• How to query VictoriaMetrics via Graphite API
• How to handle alerts

VictoriaMetrics accepts Prometheus querying API requests on port 8428 by default.

It is recommended setting up monitoring for VictoriaMetrics.

VictoriaMetrics is developed at a fast pace, so it is recommended periodically checking the CHANGELOG and performing regular upgrades.

Environment variables

All the VictoriaMetrics components allow referring environment variables in command-line flags via %{ENV_VAR} syntax. For example, -metricsAuthKey=%{METRICS_AUTH_KEY} is automatically expanded to -metricsAuthKey=top-secret if METRICS_AUTH_KEY=top-secret environment variable exists at VictoriaMetrics startup. This expansion is performed by VictoriaMetrics itself.

VictoriaMetrics recursively expands %{ENV_VAR} references in environment variables on startup. For example, FOO=%{BAR} environment variable is expanded to FOO=abc if BAR=a%{BAZ} and BAZ=bc.

Additionally, all the VictoriaMetrics components allow setting flag values via environment variables according to these rules:

• The -envflag.enable flag must be set.
• Each . char in flag name must be substituted with _ (for example -insert.maxQueueDuration <duration> will translate to insert_maxQueueDuration=<duration>).
• For repeating flags an alternative syntax can be used by joining the different values into one using , char as separator (for example -storageNode <nodeA> -storageNode <nodeB> will translate to storageNode=<nodeA>,<nodeB>).
• Environment var prefix can be set via -envflag.prefix flag. For instance, if -envflag.prefix=VM_, then env vars must be prepended with VM_.

Configuration with snap package

Snap package for VictoriaMetrics is available here.

Command-line flags for Snap package can be set with following command:

echo 'FLAGS="-selfScrapeInterval=10s -search.logSlowQueryDuration=20s"' > $SNAP_DATA/var/snap/victoriametrics/current/extra_flags
snap restart victoriametrics

Do not change value for -storageDataPath flag, because snap package has limited access to host filesystem.

Changing scrape configuration is possible with text editor:

vi $SNAP_DATA/var/snap/victoriametrics/current/etc/victoriametrics-scrape-config.yaml

After changes were made, trigger config re-read with the command curl 127.0.0.1:8248/-/reload.

Prometheus setup

Add the following lines to Prometheus config file (it is usually located at /etc/prometheus/prometheus.yml) in order to send data to VictoriaMetrics:

remote_write:
  - url: http://<victoriametrics-addr>:8428/api/v1/write

Substitute <victoriametrics-addr> with hostname or IP address of VictoriaMetrics. Then apply new config via the following command:

kill -HUP `pidof prometheus`

Prometheus writes incoming data to local storage and replicates it to remote storage in parallel. This means that data remains available in local storage for --storage.tsdb.retention.time duration even if remote storage is unavailable.

If you plan sending data to VictoriaMetrics from multiple Prometheus instances, then add the following lines into global section of Prometheus config:

global:
  external_labels:
    datacenter: dc-123

This instructs Prometheus to add datacenter=dc-123 label to each sample before sending it to remote storage. The label name can be arbitrary - datacenter is just an example. The label value must be unique across Prometheus instances, so time series could be filtered and grouped by this label.

For highly loaded Prometheus instances (200k+ samples per second) the following tuning may be applied:

remote_write:
  - url: http://<victoriametrics-addr>:8428/api/v1/write
    queue_config:
      max_samples_per_send: 10000
      capacity: 20000
      max_shards: 30

Using remote write increases memory usage for Prometheus by up to ~25%. If you are experiencing issues with too high memory consumption of Prometheus, then try to lower max_samples_per_send and capacity params. Keep in mind that these two params are tightly connected. Read more about tuning remote write for Prometheus here.

It is recommended upgrading Prometheus to v2.12.0 or newer, since previous versions may have issues with remote_write.

Take a look also at vmagent and vmalert, which can be used as faster and less resource-hungry alternative to Prometheus.

Grafana setup

Create Prometheus datasource in Grafana with the following url:

http://<victoriametrics-addr>:8428

Substitute <victoriametrics-addr> with the hostname or IP address of VictoriaMetrics.

Then build graphs and dashboards for the created datasource using PromQL or MetricsQL.

How to upgrade VictoriaMetrics

VictoriaMetrics is developed at a fast pace, so it is recommended periodically checking the CHANGELOG page and performing regular upgrades.

It is safe upgrading VictoriaMetrics to new versions unless release notes say otherwise. It is safe skipping multiple versions during the upgrade unless release notes say otherwise. It is recommended performing regular upgrades to the latest version, since it may contain important bug fixes, performance optimizations or new features.

It is also safe downgrading to older versions unless release notes say otherwise.

The following steps must be performed during the upgrade / downgrade procedure:

• Send SIGINT signal to VictoriaMetrics process in order to gracefully stop it. See how to send signals to processes.
• Wait until the process stops. This can take a few seconds.
• Start the upgraded VictoriaMetrics.

Prometheus doesn't drop data during VictoriaMetrics restart. See this article for details. The same applies also to vmagent.

vmui

VictoriaMetrics provides UI for query troubleshooting and exploration. The UI is available at http://victoriametrics:8428/vmui. The UI allows exploring query results via graphs and tables. It also provides the following features:

• cardinality explorer
• query tracer
• top queries explorer

Graphs in vmui support scrolling and zooming:

• Select the needed time range on the graph in order to zoom in into the selected time range. Hold ctrl (or cmd on MacOS) and scroll down in order to zoom out.
• Hold ctrl (or cmd on MacOS) and scroll up in order to zoom in the area under cursor.
• Hold ctrl (or cmd on MacOS) and drag the graph to the left / right in order to move the displayed time range into the future / past.

Query history can be navigated by holding Ctrl (or Cmd on MacOS) and pressing up or down arrows on the keyboard while the cursor is located in the query input field.

Multi-line queries can be entered by pressing Shift-Enter in query input field.

When querying the backfilled data or during query troubleshooting, it may be useful disabling response cache by clicking Disable cache checkbox.

VMUI automatically adjusts the interval between datapoints on the graph depending on the horizontal resolution and on the selected time range. The step value can be customized by changing Step value input.

VMUI allows investigating correlations between multiple queries on the same graph. Just click Add Query button, enter an additional query in the newly appeared input field and press Enter. Results for all the queries are displayed simultaneously on the same graph. Graphs for a particular query can be temporarily hidden by clicking the eye icon on the right side of the input field.

See the example VMUI at VictoriaMetrics playground.

Top queries

VMUI provides top queries tab, which can help determining the following query types:

• the most frequently executed queries;
• queries with the biggest average execution duration;
• queries that took the most summary time for execution.

Cardinality explorer

VictoriaMetrics provides an ability to explore time series cardinality at cardinality tab in vmui in the following ways:

• To identify metric names with the highest number of series.
• To identify labels with the highest number of series.
• To identify values with the highest number of series for the selected label (aka focusLabel).
• To identify label=name pairs with the highest number of series.
• To identify labels with the highest number of unique values. Note that cluster version of VictoriaMetrics may show lower than expected number of unique label values for labels with small number of unique values. This is because of implementation limits.

By default cardinality explorer analyzes time series for the current date. It provides the ability to select different day at the top right corner. By default all the time series for the selected date are analyzed. It is possible to narrow down the analysis to series matching the specified series selector.

Cardinality explorer is built on top of /api/v1/status/tsdb.

See cardinality explorer playground. See the example of using the cardinality explorer here.

How to apply new config to VictoriaMetrics

VictoriaMetrics is configured via command-line flags, so it must be restarted when new command-line flags should be applied:

• Send SIGINT signal to VictoriaMetrics process in order to gracefully stop it.
• Wait until the process stops. This can take a few seconds.
• Start VictoriaMetrics with the new command-line flags.

Prometheus doesn't drop data during VictoriaMetrics restart. See this article for details. The same applies also to vmagent.

How to scrape Prometheus exporters such as node-exporter

VictoriaMetrics can be used as drop-in replacement for Prometheus for scraping targets configured in prometheus.yml config file according to the specification. Just set -promscrape.config command-line flag to the path to prometheus.yml config - and VictoriaMetrics should start scraping the configured targets.

The file pointed by -promscrape.config may contain %{ENV_VAR} placeholders, which are substituted by the corresponding ENV_VAR environment variable values.

See the list of supported service discovery types for Prometheus scrape targets.

VictoriaMetrics also supports importing data in Prometheus exposition format.

See also vmagent, which can be used as drop-in replacement for Prometheus.

How to send data from DataDog agent

VictoriaMetrics accepts data from DataDog agent or DogStatsD via "submit metrics" API at /datadog/api/v1/series path.

Sending metrics to VictoriaMetrics

DataDog agent allows configuring destinations for metrics sending via ENV variable DD_DD_URL or via configuration file in section dd_url.

To configure DataDog agent via ENV variable add the following prefix:

DD_DD_URL=http://victoriametrics:8428/datadog

Choose correct URL for VictoriaMetrics here.

To configure DataDog agent via configuration file add the following line:

dd_url: http://victoriametrics:8428/datadog

vmagent also can accept Datadog metrics format. Depending on where vmagent will forward data, pick single-node or cluster URL formats.

Sending metrics to Datadog and VictoriaMetrics

DataDog allows configuring Dual Shipping for metrics sending via ENV variable DD_ADDITIONAL_ENDPOINTS or via configuration file additional_endpoints.

Run DataDog using the following ENV variable with VictoriaMetrics as additional metrics receiver:

DD_ADDITIONAL_ENDPOINTS='{\"http://victoriametrics:8428/datadog\"}'

Choose correct URL for VictoriaMetrics here.

To configure DataDog Dual Shipping via configuration file add the following line:

additional_endpoints: http://victoriametrics:8428/datadog

Send via cURL

See how to send data to VictoriaMetrics via DataDog "submit metrics" from command line.

The imported data can be read via export API.

Additional details

VictoriaMetrics automatically sanitizes metric names for the data ingested via DataDog protocol according to DataDog metric naming recommendations. If you need accepting metric names as is without sanitizing, then pass -datadog.sanitizeMetricName=false command-line flag to VictoriaMetrics.

Extra labels may be added to all the written time series by passing extra_label=name=value query args. For example, /datadog/api/v1/series?extra_label=foo=bar would add {foo="bar"} label to all the ingested metrics.

DataDog agent sends the configured tags to undocumented endpoint - /datadog/intake. This endpoint isn't supported by VictoriaMetrics yet. This prevents from adding the configured tags to DataDog agent data sent into VictoriaMetrics. The workaround is to run a sidecar vmagent alongside every DataDog agent, which must run with DD_DD_URL=http://localhost:8429/datadog environment variable. The sidecar vmagent must be configured with the needed tags via -remoteWrite.label command-line flag and must forward incoming data with the added tags to a centralized VictoriaMetrics specified via -remoteWrite.url command-line flag.

See these docs for details on how to add labels to metrics at vmagent.

How to send data from InfluxDB-compatible agents such as Telegraf

Use http://<victoriametrics-addr>:8428 url instead of InfluxDB url in agents' configs. For instance, put the following lines into Telegraf config, so it sends data to VictoriaMetrics instead of InfluxDB:

[[outputs.influxdb]]
  urls = ["http://<victoriametrics-addr>:8428"]

Another option is to enable TCP and UDP receiver for InfluxDB line protocol via -influxListenAddr command-line flag and stream plain InfluxDB line protocol data to the configured TCP and/or UDP addresses.

VictoriaMetrics performs the following transformations to the ingested InfluxDB data:

• db query arg is mapped into db label value unless db tag exists in the InfluxDB line. The db label name can be overridden via -influxDBLabel command-line flag.
• Field names are mapped to time series names prefixed with {measurement}{separator} value, where {separator} equals to _ by default. It can be changed with -influxMeasurementFieldSeparator command-line flag. See also -influxSkipSingleField command-line flag. If {measurement} is empty or if -influxSkipMeasurement command-line flag is set, then time series names correspond to field names.
• Field values are mapped to time series values.
• Tags are mapped to Prometheus labels as-is.
• If -usePromCompatibleNaming command-line flag is set, then all the metric names and label names are normalized to Prometheus-compatible naming by replacing unsupported chars with _. For example, foo.bar-baz/1 metric name or label name is substituted with foo_bar_baz_1.

For example, the following InfluxDB line:

foo,tag1=value1,tag2=value2 field1=12,field2=40

is converted into the following Prometheus data points:

foo_field1{tag1="value1", tag2="value2"} 12
foo_field2{tag1="value1", tag2="value2"} 40

Example for writing data with InfluxDB line protocol to local VictoriaMetrics using curl:

curl -d 'measurement,tag1=value1,tag2=value2 field1=123,field2=1.23' -X POST 'http://localhost:8428/write'

An arbitrary number of lines delimited by '\n' (aka newline char) can be sent in a single request. After that the data may be read via /api/v1/export endpoint:

curl -G 'http://localhost:8428/api/v1/export' -d 'match={__name__=~"measurement_.*"}'

The /api/v1/export endpoint should return the following response:

{"metric":{"__name__":"measurement_field1","tag1":"value1","tag2":"value2"},"values":[123],"timestamps":[1560272508147]}
{"metric":{"__name__":"measurement_field2","tag1":"value1","tag2":"value2"},"values":[1.23],"timestamps":[1560272508147]}

Note that InfluxDB line protocol expects timestamps in nanoseconds by default, while VictoriaMetrics stores them with milliseconds precision.

Extra labels may be added to all the written time series by passing extra_label=name=value query args. For example, /write?extra_label=foo=bar would add {foo="bar"} label to all the ingested metrics.

Some plugins for Telegraf such as fluentd, Juniper/open-nti or Juniper/jitmon send SHOW DATABASES query to /query and expect a particular database name in the response. Comma-separated list of expected databases can be passed to VictoriaMetrics via -influx.databaseNames command-line flag.

How to send data from Graphite-compatible agents such as StatsD

Enable Graphite receiver in VictoriaMetrics by setting -graphiteListenAddr command line flag. For instance, the following command will enable Graphite receiver in VictoriaMetrics on TCP and UDP port 2003:

/path/to/victoria-metrics-prod -graphiteListenAddr=:2003

Use the configured address in Graphite-compatible agents. For instance, set graphiteHost to the VictoriaMetrics host in StatsD configs.

Example for writing data with Graphite plaintext protocol to local VictoriaMetrics using nc:

echo "foo.bar.baz;tag1=value1;tag2=value2 123 `date +%s`" | nc -N localhost 2003

VictoriaMetrics sets the current time if the timestamp is omitted. An arbitrary number of lines delimited by \n (aka newline char) can be sent in one go. After that the data may be read via /api/v1/export endpoint:

curl -G 'http://localhost:8428/api/v1/export' -d 'match=foo.bar.baz'

The /api/v1/export endpoint should return the following response:

{"metric":{"__name__":"foo.bar.baz","tag1":"value1","tag2":"value2"},"values":[123],"timestamps":[1560277406000]}

Graphite relabeling can be used if the imported Graphite data is going to be queried via MetricsQL.

Querying Graphite data

Data sent to VictoriaMetrics via Graphite plaintext protocol may be read via the following APIs:

• Graphite API
• Prometheus querying API. See also selecting Graphite metrics.
• go-graphite/carbonapi

Selecting Graphite metrics

VictoriaMetrics supports __graphite__ pseudo-label for selecting time series with Graphite-compatible filters in MetricsQL. For example, {__graphite__="foo.*.bar"} is equivalent to {__name__=~"foo[.][^.]*[.]bar"}, but it works faster and it is easier to use when migrating from Graphite to VictoriaMetrics. See docs for Graphite paths and wildcards. VictoriaMetrics also supports label_graphite_group function for extracting the given groups from Graphite metric name.

The __graphite__ pseudo-label supports e.g. alternate regexp filters such as (value1|...|valueN). They are transparently converted to {value1,...,valueN} syntax used in Graphite. This allows using multi-value template variables in Grafana inside __graphite__ pseudo-label. For example, Grafana expands {__graphite__=~"foo.($bar).baz"} into {__graphite__=~"foo.(x|y).baz"} if $bar template variable contains x and y values. In this case the query is automatically converted into {__graphite__=~"foo.{x,y}.baz"} before execution.

VictoriaMetrics also supports Graphite query language - see these docs.

How to send data from OpenTSDB-compatible agents

VictoriaMetrics supports telnet put protocol and HTTP /api/put requests for ingesting OpenTSDB data. The same protocol is used for ingesting data in KairosDB.

Sending data via telnet put protocol

Enable OpenTSDB receiver in VictoriaMetrics by setting -opentsdbListenAddr command line flag. For instance, the following command enables OpenTSDB receiver in VictoriaMetrics on TCP and UDP port 4242:

/path/to/victoria-metrics-prod -opentsdbListenAddr=:4242

Send data to the given address from OpenTSDB-compatible agents.

Example for writing data with OpenTSDB protocol to local VictoriaMetrics using nc:

echo "put foo.bar.baz `date +%s` 123 tag1=value1 tag2=value2" | nc -N localhost 4242

An arbitrary number of lines delimited by \n (aka newline char) can be sent in one go. After that the data may be read via /api/v1/export endpoint:

curl -G 'http://localhost:8428/api/v1/export' -d 'match=foo.bar.baz'

The /api/v1/export endpoint should return the following response:

{"metric":{"__name__":"foo.bar.baz","tag1":"value1","tag2":"value2"},"values":[123],"timestamps":[1560277292000]}

Sending OpenTSDB data via HTTP /api/put requests

Enable HTTP server for OpenTSDB /api/put requests by setting -opentsdbHTTPListenAddr command line flag. For instance, the following command enables OpenTSDB HTTP server on port 4242:

/path/to/victoria-metrics-prod -opentsdbHTTPListenAddr=:4242

Send data to the given address from OpenTSDB-compatible agents.

Example for writing a single data point:

curl -H 'Content-Type: application/json' -d '{"metric":"x.y.z","value":45.34,"tags":{"t1":"v1","t2":"v2"}}' http://localhost:4242/api/put

Example for writing multiple data points in a single request:

curl -H 'Content-Type: application/json' -d '[{"metric":"foo","value":45.34},{"metric":"bar","value":43}]' http://localhost:4242/api/put

After that the data may be read via /api/v1/export endpoint:

curl -G 'http://localhost:8428/api/v1/export' -d 'match[]=x.y.z' -d 'match[]=foo' -d 'match[]=bar'

The /api/v1/export endpoint should return the following response:

{"metric":{"__name__":"foo"},"values":[45.34],"timestamps":[1566464846000]}
{"metric":{"__name__":"bar"},"values":[43],"timestamps":[1566464846000]}
{"metric":{"__name__":"x.y.z","t1":"v1","t2":"v2"},"values":[45.34],"timestamps":[1566464763000]}

Extra labels may be added to all the imported time series by passing extra_label=name=value query args. For example, /api/put?extra_label=foo=bar would add {foo="bar"} label to all the ingested metrics.

Prometheus querying API usage

VictoriaMetrics supports the following handlers from Prometheus querying API:

• /api/v1/query
• /api/v1/query_range
• /api/v1/series
• /api/v1/labels
• /api/v1/label/.../values
• /api/v1/status/tsdb. See these docs for details.
• /api/v1/targets - see these docs for more details.
• /federate - see these docs for more details.

These handlers can be queried from Prometheus-compatible clients such as Grafana or curl. All the Prometheus querying API handlers can be prepended with /prometheus prefix. For example, both /prometheus/api/v1/query and /api/v1/query should work.

Prometheus querying API enhancements

VictoriaMetrics accepts optional extra_label=<label_name>=<label_value> query arg, which can be used for enforcing additional label filters for queries. For example, /api/v1/query_range?extra_label=user_id=123&extra_label=group_id=456&query=<query> would automatically add {user_id="123",group_id="456"} label filters to the given <query>. This functionality can be used for limiting the scope of time series visible to the given tenant. It is expected that the extra_label query args are automatically set by auth proxy sitting in front of VictoriaMetrics. See vmauth and vmgateway as examples of such proxies.

VictoriaMetrics accepts optional extra_filters[]=series_selector query arg, which can be used for enforcing arbitrary label filters for queries. For example, /api/v1/query_range?extra_filters[]={env=~"prod|staging",user="xyz"}&query=<query> would automatically add {env=~"prod|staging",user="xyz"} label filters to the given <query>. This functionality can be used for limiting the scope of time series visible to the given tenant. It is expected that the extra_filters[] query args are automatically set by auth proxy sitting in front of VictoriaMetrics. See vmauth and vmgateway as examples of such proxies.

VictoriaMetrics accepts relative times in time, start and end query args additionally to unix timestamps and RFC3339. For example, the following query would return data for the last 30 minutes: /api/v1/query_range?start=-30m&query=....

VictoriaMetrics accepts round_digits query arg for /api/v1/query and /api/v1/query_range handlers. It can be used for rounding response values to the given number of digits after the decimal point. For example, /api/v1/query?query=avg_over_time(temperature[1h])&round_digits=2 would round response values to up to two digits after the decimal point.

VictoriaMetrics accepts limit query arg for /api/v1/labels and /api/v1/label/<labelName>/values handlers for limiting the number of returned entries. For example, the query to /api/v1/labels?limit=5 returns a sample of up to 5 unique labels, while ignoring the rest of labels. If the provided limit value exceeds the corresponding -search.maxTagKeys / -search.maxTagValues command-line flag values, then limits specified in the command-line flags are used.

By default, VictoriaMetrics returns time series for the last 5 minutes from /api/v1/series, /api/v1/labels and /api/v1/label/<labelName>/values while the Prometheus API defaults to all time. Explicitly set start and end to select the desired time range. VictoriaMetrics accepts limit query arg for /api/v1/series handlers for limiting the number of returned entries. For example, the query to /api/v1/series?limit=5 returns a sample of up to 5 series, while ignoring the rest. If the provided limit value exceeds the corresponding -search.maxSeries command-line flag values, then limits specified in the command-line flags are used.

Additionally, VictoriaMetrics provides the following handlers:

• /vmui - Basic Web UI. See these docs.

• /api/v1/series/count - returns the total number of time series in the database. Some notes:

  • the handler scans all the inverted index, so it can be slow if the database contains tens of millions of time series;
  • the handler may count deleted time series additionally to normal time series due to internal implementation restrictions;

• /api/v1/status/active_queries - returns a list of currently running queries.

• /api/v1/status/top_queries - returns the following query lists:

  • the most frequently executed queries - topByCount
  • queries with the biggest average execution duration - topByAvgDuration
  • queries that took the most time for execution - topBySumDuration

  The number of returned queries can be limited via topN query arg. Old queries can be filtered out with maxLifetime query arg. For example, request to /api/v1/status/top_queries?topN=5&maxLifetime=30s would return up to 5 queries per list, which were executed during the last 30 seconds. VictoriaMetrics tracks the last -search.queryStats.lastQueriesCount queries with durations at least -search.queryStats.minQueryDuration.

Graphite API usage

VictoriaMetrics supports data ingestion in Graphite protocol - see these docs for details. VictoriaMetrics supports the following Graphite querying APIs, which are needed for Graphite datasource in Grafana:

• Render API - see these docs.
• Metrics API - see these docs.
• Tags API - see these docs.

All the Graphite handlers can be pre-pended with /graphite prefix. For example, both /graphite/metrics/find and /metrics/find should work.

VictoriaMetrics accepts optional query args: extra_label=<label_name>=<label_value> and extra_filters[]=series_selector query args for all the Graphite APIs. These args can be used for limiting the scope of time series visible to the given tenant. It is expected that the extra_label query arg is automatically set by auth proxy sitting in front of VictoriaMetrics. See vmauth and vmgateway as examples of such proxies.

Contact us if you need assistance with such a proxy.

VictoriaMetrics supports __graphite__ pseudo-label for filtering time series with Graphite-compatible filters in MetricsQL. See these docs.

Graphite Render API usage

VictoriaMetrics Enterprise supports Graphite Render API subset at /render endpoint, which is used by Graphite datasource in Grafana. When configuring Graphite datasource in Grafana, the Storage-Step http request header must be set to a step between Graphite data points stored in VictoriaMetrics. For example, Storage-Step: 10s would mean 10 seconds distance between Graphite datapoints stored in VictoriaMetrics. Enterprise binaries can be downloaded and evaluated for free from the releases page.

Graphite Metrics API usage

VictoriaMetrics supports the following handlers from Graphite Metrics API:

• /metrics/find
• /metrics/expand
• /metrics/index.json

VictoriaMetrics accepts the following additional query args at /metrics/find and /metrics/expand:

• label - for selecting arbitrary label values. By default label=__name__, i.e. metric names are selected.
• delimiter - for using different delimiters in metric name hierarchy. For example, /metrics/find?delimiter=_&query=node_* would return all the metric name prefixes that start with node_. By default delimiter=..

Graphite Tags API usage

VictoriaMetrics supports the following handlers from Graphite Tags API:

• /tags/tagSeries
• /tags/tagMultiSeries
• /tags
• /tags/{tag_name}
• /tags/findSeries
• /tags/autoComplete/tags
• /tags/autoComplete/values
• /tags/delSeries

How to build from sources

We recommend using either binary releases or docker images instead of building VictoriaMetrics from sources. Building from sources is reasonable when developing additional features specific to your needs or when testing bugfixes.

Development build

1. Install Go. The minimum supported version is Go 1.19.3.
2. Run make victoria-metrics from the root folder of the repository. It builds victoria-metrics binary and puts it into the bin folder.

Production build

1. Install docker.
2. Run make victoria-metrics-prod from the root folder of the repository. It builds victoria-metrics-prod binary and puts it into the bin folder.

ARM build

ARM build may run on Raspberry Pi or on energy-efficient ARM servers.

Development ARM build

1. Install Go. The minimum supported version is Go 1.19.3.
2. Run make victoria-metrics-linux-arm or make victoria-metrics-linux-arm64 from the root folder of the repository. It builds victoria-metrics-linux-arm or victoria-metrics-linux-arm64 binary respectively and puts it into the bin folder.

Production ARM build

1. Install docker.
2. Run make victoria-metrics-linux-arm-prod or make victoria-metrics-linux-arm64-prod from the root folder of the repository. It builds victoria-metrics-linux-arm-prod or victoria-metrics-linux-arm64-prod binary respectively and puts it into the bin folder.

Pure Go build (CGO_ENABLED=0)

Pure Go mode builds only Go code without cgo dependencies.

1. Install Go. The minimum supported version is Go 1.19.3.
2. Run make victoria-metrics-pure from the root folder of the repository. It builds victoria-metrics-pure binary and puts it into the bin folder.

Building docker images

Run make package-victoria-metrics. It builds victoriametrics/victoria-metrics:<PKG_TAG> docker image locally. <PKG_TAG> is auto-generated image tag, which depends on source code in the repository. The <PKG_TAG> may be manually set via PKG_TAG=foobar make package-victoria-metrics.

The base docker image is alpine but it is possible to use any other base image by setting it via <ROOT_IMAGE> environment variable. For example, the following command builds the image on top of scratch image:

ROOT_IMAGE=scratch make package-victoria-metrics

Start with docker-compose

Docker-compose helps to spin up VictoriaMetrics, vmagent and Grafana with one command. More details may be found here.

Setting up service

Read instructions on how to set up VictoriaMetrics as a service for your OS. A snap package is available for Ubuntu.

How to work with snapshots

VictoriaMetrics can create instant snapshots for all the data stored under -storageDataPath directory. Navigate to http://<victoriametrics-addr>:8428/snapshot/create in order to create an instant snapshot. The page will return the following JSON response:

{"status":"ok","snapshot":"<snapshot-name>"}

Snapshots are created under <-storageDataPath>/snapshots directory, where <-storageDataPath> is the command-line flag value. Snapshots can be archived to backup storage at any time with vmbackup.

The http://<victoriametrics-addr>:8428/snapshot/list page contains the list of available snapshots.

Navigate to http://<victoriametrics-addr>:8428/snapshot/delete?snapshot=<snapshot-name> in order to delete <snapshot-name> snapshot.

Navigate to http://<victoriametrics-addr>:8428/snapshot/delete_all in order to delete all the snapshots.

Steps for restoring from a snapshot:

1. Stop VictoriaMetrics with kill -INT.
2. Restore snapshot contents from backup with vmrestore to the directory pointed by -storageDataPath.
3. Start VictoriaMetrics.

How to delete time series

Send a request to http://<victoriametrics-addr>:8428/api/v1/admin/tsdb/delete_series?match[]=<timeseries_selector_for_delete>, where <timeseries_selector_for_delete> may contain any time series selector for metrics to delete. Delete API doesn't support the deletion of specific time ranges, the series can only be deleted completely. Storage space for the deleted time series isn't freed instantly - it is freed during subsequent background merges of data files.

Note that background merges may never occur for data from previous months, so storage space won't be freed for historical data. In this case forced merge may help freeing up storage space.

It is recommended verifying which metrics will be deleted with the call to http://<victoria-metrics-addr>:8428/api/v1/series?match[]=<timeseries_selector_for_delete> before actually deleting the metrics. By default this query will only scan series in the past 5 minutes, so you may need to adjust start and end to a suitable range to achieve match hits.

The /api/v1/admin/tsdb/delete_series handler may be protected with authKey if -deleteAuthKey command-line flag is set.

The delete API is intended mainly for the following cases:

• One-off deleting of accidentally written invalid (or undesired) time series.
• One-off deleting of user data due to GDPR.

Using the delete API is not recommended in the following cases, since it brings a non-zero overhead:

• Regular cleanups for unneeded data. Just prevent writing unneeded data into VictoriaMetrics. This can be done with relabeling. See this article for details.
• Reducing disk space usage by deleting unneeded time series. This doesn't work as expected, since the deleted time series occupy disk space until the next merge operation, which can never occur when deleting too old data. Forced merge may be used for freeing up disk space occupied by old data. Note that VictoriaMetrics doesn't delete entries from inverted index (aka indexdb) for the deleted time series. Inverted index is cleaned up once per the configured retention.

It's better to use the -retentionPeriod command-line flag for efficient pruning of old data.

Forced merge

VictoriaMetrics performs data compactions in background in order to keep good performance characteristics when accepting new data. These compactions (merges) are performed independently on per-month partitions. This means that compactions are stopped for per-month partitions if no new data is ingested into these partitions. Sometimes it is necessary to trigger compactions for old partitions. For instance, in order to free up disk space occupied by deleted time series. In this case forced compaction may be initiated on the specified per-month partition by sending request to /internal/force_merge?partition_prefix=YYYY_MM, where YYYY_MM is per-month partition name. For example, http://victoriametrics:8428/internal/force_merge?partition_prefix=2020_08 would initiate forced merge for August 2020 partition. The call to /internal/force_merge returns immediately, while the corresponding forced merge continues running in background.

Forced merges may require additional CPU, disk IO and storage space resources. It is unnecessary to run forced merge under normal conditions, since VictoriaMetrics automatically performs optimal merges in background when new data is ingested into it.

How to export time series

VictoriaMetrics provides the following handlers for exporting data:

• /api/v1/export for exporting data in JSON line format. See these docs for details.
• /api/v1/export/csv for exporting data in CSV. See these docs for details.
• /api/v1/export/native for exporting data in native binary format. This is the most efficient format for data export. See these docs for details.

How to export data in JSON line format

Send a request to http://<victoriametrics-addr>:8428/api/v1/export?match[]=<timeseries_selector_for_export>, where <timeseries_selector_for_export> may contain any time series selector for metrics to export. Use {__name__!=""} selector for fetching all the time series. The response would contain all the data for the selected time series in JSON streaming format. Each JSON line contains samples for a single time series. An example output:

{"metric":{"__name__":"up","job":"node_exporter","instance":"localhost:9100"},"values":[0,0,0],"timestamps":[1549891472010,1549891487724,1549891503438]}
{"metric":{"__name__":"up","job":"prometheus","instance":"localhost:9090"},"values":[1,1,1],"timestamps":[1549891461511,1549891476511,1549891491511]}

Optional start and end args may be added to the request in order to limit the time frame for the exported data. These args may contain either unix timestamp in seconds or RFC3339 values. For example:

curl http://<victoriametrics-addr>:8428/api/v1/export -d 'match[]=<timeseries_selector_for_export>' -d 'start=1654543486' -d 'end=1654543486'
curl http://<victoriametrics-addr>:8428/api/v1/export -d 'match[]=<timeseries_selector_for_export>' -d 'start=2022-06-06T19:25:48+00:00' -d 'end=2022-06-06T19:29:07+00:00'

Optional max_rows_per_line arg may be added to the request for limiting the maximum number of rows exported per each JSON line. Optional reduce_mem_usage=1 arg may be added to the request for reducing memory usage when exporting big number of time series. In this case the output may contain multiple lines with samples for the same time series.

Pass Accept-Encoding: gzip HTTP header in the request to /api/v1/export in order to reduce network bandwidth during exporting big amounts of time series data. This enables gzip compression for the exported data. Example for exporting gzipped data:

curl -H 'Accept-Encoding: gzip' http://localhost:8428/api/v1/export -d 'match[]={__name__!=""}' > data.jsonl.gz

The maximum duration for each request to /api/v1/export is limited by -search.maxExportDuration command-line flag.

Exported data can be imported via POST'ing it to /api/v1/import.

The deduplication is applied to the data exported via /api/v1/export by default. The deduplication isn't applied if reduce_mem_usage=1 query arg is passed to the request.

How to export CSV data

Send a request to http://<victoriametrics-addr>:8428/api/v1/export/csv?format=<format>&match=<timeseries_selector_for_export>, where:

• <format> must contain comma-delimited label names for the exported CSV. The following special label names are supported:

  • __name__ - metric name
  • __value__ - sample value
  • __timestamp__:<ts_format> - sample timestamp. <ts_format> can have the following values:
    • unix_s - unix seconds
    • unix_ms - unix milliseconds
    • unix_ns - unix nanoseconds
    • rfc3339 - RFC3339 time
    • custom:<layout> - custom layout for time that is supported by time.Format function from Go.

• <timeseries_selector_for_export> may contain any time series selector for metrics to export.

Optional start and end args may be added to the request in order to limit the time frame for the exported data. These args may contain either unix timestamp in seconds or RFC3339 values. For example:

curl http://<victoriametrics-addr>:8428/api/v1/export/csv -d 'format=<format>' -d 'match[]=<timeseries_selector_for_export>' -d 'start=1654543486' -d 'end=1654543486'
curl http://<victoriametrics-addr>:8428/api/v1/export/csv -d 'format=<format>' -d 'match[]=<timeseries_selector_for_export>' -d 'start=2022-06-06T19:25:48+00:00' -d 'end=2022-06-06T19:29:07+00:00'

The exported CSV data can be imported to VictoriaMetrics via /api/v1/import/csv.

The deduplication is applied for the data exported in CSV by default. It is possible to export raw data without de-duplication by passing reduce_mem_usage=1 query arg to /api/v1/export/csv.

How to export data in native format

Send a request to http://<victoriametrics-addr>:8428/api/v1/export/native?match[]=<timeseries_selector_for_export>, where <timeseries_selector_for_export> may contain any time series selector for metrics to export. Use {__name__=~".*"} selector for fetching all the time series.

On large databases you may experience problems with limit on the number of time series, which can be exported. In this case you need to adjust -search.maxExportSeries command-line flag:

# count unique time series in database
wget -O- -q 'http://your_victoriametrics_instance:8428/api/v1/series/count' | jq '.data[0]'

# relaunch victoriametrics with search.maxExportSeries more than value from previous command

Optional start and end args may be added to the request in order to limit the time frame for the exported data. These args may contain either unix timestamp in seconds or RFC3339 values. For example:

curl http://<victoriametrics-addr>:8428/api/v1/export/native -d 'match[]=<timeseries_selector_for_export>' -d 'start=1654543486' -d 'end=1654543486'
curl http://<victoriametrics-addr>:8428/api/v1/export/native -d 'match[]=<timeseries_selector_for_export>' -d 'start=2022-06-06T19:25:48+00:00' -d 'end=2022-06-06T19:29:07+00:00'

The exported data can be imported to VictoriaMetrics via /api/v1/import/native. The native export format may change in incompatible way between VictoriaMetrics releases, so the data exported from the release X can fail to be imported into VictoriaMetrics release Y.

The deduplication isn't applied for the data exported in native format. It is expected that the de-duplication is performed during data import.

How to import time series data

Time series data can be imported into VictoriaMetrics via any supported data ingestion protocol:

• Prometheus remote_write API. See these docs for details.
• DataDog submit metrics API. See these docs for details.
• InfluxDB line protocol. See these docs for details.
• Graphite plaintext protocol. See these docs for details.
• OpenTSDB telnet put protocol. See these docs for details.
• OpenTSDB http /api/put protocol. See these docs for details.
• /api/v1/import for importing data obtained from /api/v1/export. See these docs for details.
• /api/v1/import/native for importing data obtained from /api/v1/export/native. See these docs for details.
• /api/v1/import/csv for importing arbitrary CSV data. See these docs for details.
• /api/v1/import/prometheus for importing data in Prometheus exposition format and in Pushgateway format. See these docs for details.

How to import data in JSON line format

Example for importing data obtained via /api/v1/export:

# Export the data from <source-victoriametrics>:
curl http://source-victoriametrics:8428/api/v1/export -d 'match={__name__!=""}' > exported_data.jsonl

# Import the data to <destination-victoriametrics>:
curl -X POST http://destination-victoriametrics:8428/api/v1/import -T exported_data.jsonl

Pass Content-Encoding: gzip HTTP request header to /api/v1/import for importing gzipped data:

# Export gzipped data from <source-victoriametrics>:
curl -H 'Accept-Encoding: gzip' http://source-victoriametrics:8428/api/v1/export -d 'match={__name__!=""}' > exported_data.jsonl.gz

# Import gzipped data to <destination-victoriametrics>:
curl -X POST -H 'Content-Encoding: gzip' http://destination-victoriametrics:8428/api/v1/import -T exported_data.jsonl.gz

Extra labels may be added to all the imported time series by passing extra_label=name=value query args. For example, /api/v1/import?extra_label=foo=bar would add "foo":"bar" label to all the imported time series.

Note that it could be required to flush response cache after importing historical data. See these docs for detail.

VictoriaMetrics parses input JSON lines one-by-one. It loads the whole JSON line in memory, then parses it and then saves the parsed samples into persistent storage. This means that VictoriaMetrics can occupy big amounts of RAM when importing too long JSON lines. The solution is to split too long JSON lines into smaller lines. It is OK if samples for a single time series are split among multiple JSON lines.

How to import data in native format

The specification of VictoriaMetrics' native format may yet change and is not formally documented yet. So currently we do not recommend that external clients attempt to pack their own metrics in native format file.

If you have a native format file obtained via /api/v1/export/native however this is the most efficient protocol for importing data in.

# Export the data from <source-victoriametrics>:
curl http://source-victoriametrics:8428/api/v1/export/native -d 'match={__name__!=""}' > exported_data.bin

# Import the data to <destination-victoriametrics>:
curl -X POST http://destination-victoriametrics:8428/api/v1/import/native -T exported_data.bin

Extra labels may be added to all the imported time series by passing extra_label=name=value query args. For example, /api/v1/import/native?extra_label=foo=bar would add "foo":"bar" label to all the imported time series.

Note that it could be required to flush response cache after importing historical data. See these docs for detail.

How to import CSV data

Arbitrary CSV data can be imported via /api/v1/import/csv. The CSV data is imported according to the provided format query arg. The format query arg must contain comma-separated list of parsing rules for CSV fields. Each rule consists of three parts delimited by a colon:

<column_pos>:<type>:<context>

• <column_pos> is the position of the CSV column (field). Column numbering starts from 1. The order of parsing rules may be arbitrary.
• <type> describes the column type. Supported types are:
  • metric - the corresponding CSV column at <column_pos> contains metric value, which must be integer or floating-point number. The metric name is read from the <context>. CSV line must have at least a single metric field. Multiple metric fields per CSV line is OK.
  • label - the corresponding CSV column at <column_pos> contains label value. The label name is read from the <context>. CSV line may have arbitrary number of label fields. All these labels are attached to all the configured metrics.
  • time - the corresponding CSV column at <column_pos> contains metric time. CSV line may contain either one or zero columns with time. If CSV line has no time, then the current time is used. The time is applied to all the configured metrics. The format of the time is configured via <context>. Supported time formats are:
    • unix_s - unix timestamp in seconds.
    • unix_ms - unix timestamp in milliseconds.
    • unix_ns - unix timestamp in nanoseconds. Note that VictoriaMetrics rounds the timestamp to milliseconds.
    • rfc3339 - timestamp in RFC3339 format, i.e. 2006-01-02T15:04:05Z.
    • custom:<layout> - custom layout for the timestamp. The <layout> may contain arbitrary time layout according to time.Parse rules in Go.

Each request to /api/v1/import/csv may contain arbitrary number of CSV lines.

Example for importing CSV data via /api/v1/import/csv:

curl -d "GOOG,1.23,4.56,NYSE" 'http://localhost:8428/api/v1/import/csv?format=2:metric:ask,3:metric:bid,1:label:ticker,4:label:market'
curl -d "MSFT,3.21,1.67,NASDAQ" 'http://localhost:8428/api/v1/import/csv?format=2:metric:ask,3:metric:bid,1:label:ticker,4:label:market'

After that the data may be read via /api/v1/export endpoint:

curl -G 'http://localhost:8428/api/v1/export' -d 'match[]={ticker!=""}'

The following response should be returned:

{"metric":{"__name__":"bid","market":"NASDAQ","ticker":"MSFT"},"values":[1.67],"timestamps":[1583865146520]}
{"metric":{"__name__":"bid","market":"NYSE","ticker":"GOOG"},"values":[4.56],"timestamps":[1583865146495]}
{"metric":{"__name__":"ask","market":"NASDAQ","ticker":"MSFT"},"values":[3.21],"timestamps":[1583865146520]}
{"metric":{"__name__":"ask","market":"NYSE","ticker":"GOOG"},"values":[1.23],"timestamps":[1583865146495]}

Extra labels may be added to all the imported lines by passing extra_label=name=value query args. For example, /api/v1/import/csv?extra_label=foo=bar would add "foo":"bar" label to all the imported lines.

Note that it could be required to flush response cache after importing historical data. See these docs for detail.

How to import data in Prometheus exposition format

VictoriaMetrics accepts data in Prometheus exposition format, in OpenMetrics format and in Pushgateway format via /api/v1/import/prometheus path.

For example, the following command imports a single line in Prometheus exposition format into VictoriaMetrics:

curl -d 'foo{bar="baz"} 123' -X POST 'http://localhost:8428/api/v1/import/prometheus'

The following command may be used for verifying the imported data:

curl -G 'http://localhost:8428/api/v1/export' -d 'match={__name__=~"foo"}'

It should return something like the following:

{"metric":{"__name__":"foo","bar":"baz"},"values":[123],"timestamps":[1594370496905]}

The following command imports a single metric via Pushgateway format with {job="my_app",instance="host123"} labels:

curl -d 'metric{label="abc"} 123' -X POST 'http://localhost:8428/api/v1/import/prometheus/metrics/job/my_app/instance/host123'

Pass Content-Encoding: gzip HTTP request header to /api/v1/import/prometheus for importing gzipped data:

# Import gzipped data to <destination-victoriametrics>:
curl -X POST -H 'Content-Encoding: gzip' http://destination-victoriametrics:8428/api/v1/import/prometheus -T prometheus_data.gz

Extra labels may be added to all the imported metrics either via Pushgateway format or by passing extra_label=name=value query args. For example, /api/v1/import/prometheus?extra_label=foo=bar would add {foo="bar"} label to all the imported metrics.

If timestamp is missing in <metric> <value> <timestamp> Prometheus exposition format line, then the current timestamp is used during data ingestion. It can be overridden by passing unix timestamp in milliseconds via timestamp query arg. For example, /api/v1/import/prometheus?timestamp=1594370496905.

VictoriaMetrics accepts arbitrary number of lines in a single request to /api/v1/import/prometheus, i.e. it supports data streaming.

Note that it could be required to flush response cache after importing historical data. See these docs for detail.

VictoriaMetrics also may scrape Prometheus targets - see these docs.

Relabeling

VictoriaMetrics supports Prometheus-compatible relabeling for all the ingested metrics if -relabelConfig command-line flag points to a file containing a list of relabel_config entries. The -relabelConfig also can point to http or https url. For example, -relabelConfig=https://config-server/relabel_config.yml.

The following docs can be useful in understanding the relabeling:

• Cookbook for common relabeling tasks.
• Relabeling tips and tricks.

The -relabelConfig files can contain special placeholders in the form %{ENV_VAR}, which are replaced by the corresponding environment variable values.

Example contents for -relabelConfig file:

# Add {cluster="dev"} label.
- target_label: cluster
  replacement: dev

# Drop the metric (or scrape target) with `{__meta_kubernetes_pod_container_init="true"}` label.
- action: drop
  source_labels: [__meta_kubernetes_pod_container_init]
  regex: true

VictoriaMetrics provides additional relabeling features such as Graphite-style relabeling. See these docs for more details.

Federation

VictoriaMetrics exports Prometheus-compatible federation data at http://<victoriametrics-addr>:8428/federate?match[]=<timeseries_selector_for_federation>.

Optional start and end args may be added to the request in order to scrape the last point for each selected time series on the [start ... end] interval. start and end may contain either unix timestamp in seconds or RFC3339 values. For example:

curl http://<victoriametrics-addr>:8428/federate -d 'match[]=<timeseries_selector_for_export>' -d 'start=1654543486' -d 'end=1654543486'
curl http://<victoriametrics-addr>:8428/federate -d 'match[]=<timeseries_selector_for_export>' -d 'start=2022-06-06T19:25:48+00:00' -d 'end=2022-06-06T19:29:07+00:00'

By default, the last point on the interval [now - max_lookback ... now] is scraped for each time series. The default value for max_lookback is 5m (5 minutes), but it can be overridden with max_lookback query arg. For instance, /federate?match[]=up&max_lookback=1h would return last points on the [now - 1h ... now] interval. This may be useful for time series federation with scrape intervals exceeding 5m.

Capacity planning

VictoriaMetrics uses lower amounts of CPU, RAM and storage space on production workloads compared to competing solutions (Prometheus, Thanos, Cortex, TimescaleDB, InfluxDB, QuestDB, M3DB) according to our case studies.

VictoriaMetrics capacity scales linearly with the available resources. The needed amounts of CPU and RAM highly depends on the workload - the number of active time series, series churn rate, query types, query qps, etc. It is recommended setting up a test VictoriaMetrics for your production workload and iteratively scaling CPU and RAM resources until it becomes stable according to troubleshooting docs. A single-node VictoriaMetrics works perfectly with the following production workload according to our case studies:

• Ingestion rate: 1.5+ million samples per second
• Active time series: 50+ million
• Total time series: 5+ billion
• Time series churn rate: 150+ million of new series per day
• Total number of samples: 10+ trillion
• Queries: 200+ qps
• Query latency (99th percentile): 1 second

The needed storage space for the given retention (the retention is set via -retentionPeriod command-line flag) can be extrapolated from disk space usage in a test run. For example, if -storageDataPath directory size becomes 10GB after a day-long test run on a production workload, then it will need at least 10GB*100=1TB of disk space for -retentionPeriod=100d (100-days retention period).

It is recommended leaving the following amounts of spare resources:

• 50% of free RAM for reducing the probability of OOM (out of memory) crashes and slowdowns during temporary spikes in workload.
• 50% of spare CPU for reducing the probability of slowdowns during temporary spikes in workload.
• At least 20% of free storage space at the directory pointed by -storageDataPath command-line flag. See also -storage.minFreeDiskSpaceBytes command-line flag description here.

See also resource usage limits docs.

Resource usage limits

By default VictoriaMetrics is tuned for an optimal resource usage under typical workloads. Some workloads may need fine-grained resource usage limits. In these cases the following command-line flags may be useful:

• -memory.allowedPercent and -memory.allowedBytes limit the amounts of memory, which may be used for various internal caches at VictoriaMetrics. Note that VictoriaMetrics may use more memory, since these flags don't limit additional memory, which may be needed on a per-query basis.
• -search.maxMemoryPerQuery limits the amounts of memory, which can be used for processing a single query. Queries, which need more memory, are rejected. Heavy queries, which select big number of time series, may exceed the per-query memory limit by a small percent. The total memory limit for concurrently executed queries can be estimated as -search.maxMemoryPerQuery multiplied by -search.maxConcurrentRequests.
• -search.maxUniqueTimeseries limits the number of unique time series a single query can find and process. VictoriaMetrics keeps in memory some metainformation about the time series located by each query and spends some CPU time for processing the found time series. This means that the maximum memory usage and CPU usage a single query can use is proportional to -search.maxUniqueTimeseries.
• -search.maxQueryDuration limits the duration of a single query. If the query takes longer than the given duration, then it is canceled. This allows saving CPU and RAM when executing unexpected heavy queries.
• -search.maxConcurrentRequests limits the number of concurrent requests VictoriaMetrics can process. Bigger number of concurrent requests usually means bigger memory usage. For example, if a single query needs 100 MiB of additional memory during its execution, then 100 concurrent queries may need 100 * 100 MiB = 10 GiB of additional memory. So it is better to limit the number of concurrent queries, while suspending additional incoming queries if the concurrency limit is reached. VictoriaMetrics provides -search.maxQueueDuration command-line flag for limiting the max wait time for suspended queries. See also -search.maxMemoryPerQuery command-line flag.
• -search.maxSamplesPerSeries limits the number of raw samples the query can process per each time series. VictoriaMetrics sequentially processes raw samples per each found time series during the query. It unpacks raw samples on the selected time range per each time series into memory and then applies the given rollup function. The -search.maxSamplesPerSeries command-line flag allows limiting memory usage in the case when the query is executed on a time range, which contains hundreds of millions of raw samples per each located time series.
• -search.maxSamplesPerQuery limits the number of raw samples a single query can process. This allows limiting CPU usage for heavy queries.
• -search.maxPointsPerTimeseries limits the number of calculated points, which can be returned per each matching time series from range query.
• -search.maxPointsSubqueryPerTimeseries limits the number of calculated points, which can be generated per each matching time series during subquery evaluation.
• -search.maxSeries limits the number of time series, which may be returned from /api/v1/series. This endpoint is used mostly by Grafana for auto-completion of metric names, label names and label values. Queries to this endpoint may take big amounts of CPU time and memory when the database contains big number of unique time series because of high churn rate. In this case it might be useful to set the -search.maxSeries to quite low value in order limit CPU and memory usage.
• -search.maxTagKeys limits the number of items, which may be returned from /api/v1/labels. This endpoint is used mostly by Grafana for auto-completion of label names. Queries to this endpoint may take big amounts of CPU time and memory when the database contains big number of unique time series because of high churn rate. In this case it might be useful to set the -search.maxTagKeys to quite low value in order to limit CPU and memory usage.
• -search.maxTagValues limits the number of items, which may be returned from /api/v1/label/.../values. This endpoint is used mostly by Grafana for auto-completion of label values. Queries to this endpoint may take big amounts of CPU time and memory when the database contains big number of unique time series because of high churn rate. In this case it might be useful to set the -search.maxTagValues to quite low value in order to limit CPU and memory usage.
• -search.maxTagValueSuffixesPerSearch limits the number of entries, which may be returned from /metrics/find endpoint. See Graphite Metrics API usage docs.

See also cardinality limiter and capacity planning docs.

High availability

• Install multiple VictoriaMetrics instances in distinct datacenters (availability zones).
• Pass addresses of these instances to vmagent via -remoteWrite.url command-line flag:

/path/to/vmagent -remoteWrite.url=http://<victoriametrics-addr-1>:8428/api/v1/write -remoteWrite.url=http://<victoriametrics-addr-2>:8428/api/v1/write

Alternatively these addresses may be passed to remote_write section in Prometheus config:

remote_write:
  - url: http://<victoriametrics-addr-1>:8428/api/v1/write
    queue_config:
      max_samples_per_send: 10000
  # ...
  - url: http://<victoriametrics-addr-N>:8428/api/v1/write
    queue_config:
      max_samples_per_send: 10000

• Apply the updated config:

kill -HUP `pidof prometheus`

It is recommended to use vmagent instead of Prometheus for highly loaded setups.

• Now Prometheus should write data into all the configured remote_write urls in parallel.
• Set up Promxy in front of all the VictoriaMetrics replicas.
• Set up Prometheus datasource in Grafana that points to Promxy.

If you have Prometheus HA pairs with replicas r1 and r2 in each pair, then configure each r1 to write data to victoriametrics-addr-1, while each r2 should write data to victoriametrics-addr-2.

Another option is to write data simultaneously from Prometheus HA pair to a pair of VictoriaMetrics instances with the enabled de-duplication. See this section for details.

Deduplication

VictoriaMetrics leaves a single raw sample with the biggest timestamp per each -dedup.minScrapeInterval discrete interval if -dedup.minScrapeInterval is set to positive duration. For example, -dedup.minScrapeInterval=60s would leave a single raw sample with the biggest timestamp per each discrete 60s interval. If multiple raw samples have the same biggest timestamp on the given -dedup.minScrapeInterval discrete interval, then an arbitrary sample out of these samples is left. This aligns with the staleness rules in Prometheus.

The -dedup.minScrapeInterval=D is equivalent to -downsampling.period=0s:D if downsampling is enabled. So it is safe to use deduplication and downsampling simultaneously.

The recommended value for -dedup.minScrapeInterval must equal to scrape_interval config from Prometheus configs. It is recommended to have a single scrape_interval across all the scrape targets. See this article for details.

The de-duplication reduces disk space usage if multiple identically configured vmagent or Prometheus instances in HA pair write data to the same VictoriaMetrics instance. These vmagent or Prometheus instances must have identical external_labels section in their configs, so they write data to the same time series. See also how to set up multiple vmagent instances for scraping the same targets.

It is recommended passing different -promscrape.cluster.name values to HA pairs of vmagent instances, so the de-duplication consistently leaves samples for one vmagent instance and removes duplicate samples from other vmagent instances. See these docs for details.

Storage

VictoriaMetrics stores time series data in MergeTree-like data structures. On insert, VictoriaMetrics accumulates up to 1s of data and dumps it on disk to <-storageDataPath>/data/small/YYYY_MM/ subdirectory forming a part with the following name pattern: rowsCount_blocksCount_minTimestamp_maxTimestamp. Each part consists of two "columns": values and timestamps. These are sorted and compressed raw time series values. Additionally, part contains index files for searching for specific series in the values and timestamps files.

Parts are periodically merged into the bigger parts. The resulting part is constructed under <-storageDataPath>/data/{small,big}/YYYY_MM/tmp subdirectory. When the resulting part is complete, it is atomically moved from the tmp to its own subdirectory, while the source parts are atomically removed. The end result is that the source parts are substituted by a single resulting bigger part in the <-storageDataPath>/data/{small,big}/YYYY_MM/ directory.

VictoriaMetrics doesn't merge parts if their summary size exceeds free disk space. This prevents from potential out of disk space errors during merge. The number of parts may significantly increase over time under free disk space shortage. This increases overhead during data querying, since VictoriaMetrics needs to read data from bigger number of parts per each request. That's why it is recommended to have at least 20% of free disk space under directory pointed by -storageDataPath command-line flag.

Information about merging process is available in single-node VictoriaMetrics and clustered VictoriaMetrics Grafana dashboards. See more details in monitoring docs.

The merge process improves compression rate and keeps number of parts on disk relatively low. Benefits of doing the merge process are the following:

• it improves query performance, since lower number of parts are inspected with each query
• it reduces the number of data files, since each part contains fixed number of files
• various background maintenance tasks such as de-duplication, downsampling and freeing up disk space for the deleted time series are performed during the merge.

Newly added parts either appear in the storage or fail to appear. Storage never contains partially created parts. The same applies to merge process — parts are either fully merged into a new part or fail to merge. MergeTree doesn't contain partially merged parts. Part contents in MergeTree never change. Parts are immutable. They may be only deleted after the merge to a bigger part or when the part contents goes outside the configured -retentionPeriod.

See this article for more details.

See also how to work with snapshots.

Retention

Retention is configured with the -retentionPeriod command-line flag, which takes a number followed by a time unit character - h(ours), d(ays), w(eeks), y(ears). If the time unit is not specified, a month is assumed. For instance, -retentionPeriod=3 means that the data will be stored for 3 months and then deleted. The default retention period is one month.

Data is split in per-month partitions inside <-storageDataPath>/data/{small,big} folders. Data partitions outside the configured retention are deleted on the first day of the new month. Each partition consists of one or more data parts with the following name pattern rowsCount_blocksCount_minTimestamp_maxTimestamp. Data parts outside of the configured retention are eventually deleted during background merge.

The maximum disk space usage for a given -retentionPeriod is going to be (-retentionPeriod + 1) months. For example, if -retentionPeriod is set to 1, data for January is deleted on March 1st.

Please note, the time range covered by data part is not limited by retention period unit. Hence, data part may contain data for multiple days and will be deleted only when fully outside of the configured retention.

It is safe to extend -retentionPeriod on existing data. If -retentionPeriod is set to a lower value than before, then data outside the configured period will be eventually deleted.

VictoriaMetrics does not support indefinite retention, but you can specify an arbitrarily high duration, e.g. -retentionPeriod=100y.

Multiple retentions

Distinct retentions for distinct time series can be configured via retention filters in VictoriaMetrics enterprise.

Community version of VictoriaMetrics supports only a single retention, which can be configured via -retentionPeriod command-line flag. If you need multiple retentions in community version of VictoriaMetrics, then you may start multiple VictoriaMetrics instances with distinct values for the following flags:

• -retentionPeriod
• -storageDataPath, so the data for each retention period is saved in a separate directory
• -httpListenAddr, so clients may reach VictoriaMetrics instance with proper retention

Then set up vmauth in front of VictoriaMetrics instances, so it could route requests from particular user to VictoriaMetrics with the desired retention.

Similar scheme can be applied for multiple tenants in VictoriaMetrics cluster. See these docs for multi-retention setup details.

Retention filters

Enterprise version of VictoriaMetrics supports e.g. retention filters, which allow configuring multiple retentions for distinct sets of time series matching the configured series filters via -retentionFilter command-line flag. This flag accepts filter:duration options, where filter must be a valid series filter, while the duration must contain valid retention for time series matching the given filter. If series doesn't match any configured -retentionFilter, then the retention configured via -retentionPeriod command-line flag is applied to it. If series matches multiple configured retention filters, then the smallest retention is applied.

For example, the following config sets 3 days retention for time series with team="juniors" label, 30 days retention for time series with env="dev" or env="staging" label and 1 year retention for the remaining time series:

-retentionFilter='{team="juniors"}:3d' -retentionFilter='{env=~"dev|staging"}:30d' -retentionPeriod=1y

Important notes:

• The data outside of the configured retention isn't deleted instantly - it is deleted eventually during background merges.
• The -retentionFilter doesn't remove old data from indexdb (aka inverted index) until the configured -retentionPeriod. So the indexdb size can grow big under high churn rate even for small retentions configured via -retentionFilter.

It is safe updating -retentionFilter during VictoriaMetrics restarts - the updated retention filters are applied eventually to historical data.

See how to configure multiple retentions in VictoriaMetrics cluster.

Retention filters can be evaluated for free by downloading and using enterprise binaries from the releases page.

Downsampling

VictoriaMetrics Enterprise supports multi-level downsampling with -downsampling.period command-line flag. For example:

• -downsampling.period=30d:5m instructs VictoriaMetrics to deduplicate samples older than 30 days with 5 minutes interval.

• -downsampling.period=30d:5m,180d:1h instructs VictoriaMetrics to deduplicate samples older than 30 days with 5 minutes interval and to deduplicate samples older than 180 days with 1 hour interval.

Downsampling is applied independently per each time series. It can reduce disk space usage and improve query performance if it is applied to time series with big number of samples per each series. The downsampling doesn't improve query performance if the database contains big number of time series with small number of samples per each series (aka high churn rate), since downsampling doesn't reduce the number of time series. So the majority of time is spent on searching for the matching time series. It is possible to use recording rules in vmalert in order to reduce the number of time series. See these docs.

The downsampling can be evaluated for free by downloading and using enterprise binaries from the releases page.

Multi-tenancy

Single-node VictoriaMetrics doesn't support multi-tenancy. Use the cluster version instead.

Scalability and cluster version

Though single-node VictoriaMetrics cannot scale to multiple nodes, it is optimized for resource usage - storage size / bandwidth / IOPS, RAM, CPU. This means that a single-node VictoriaMetrics may scale vertically and substitute a moderately sized cluster built with competing solutions such as Thanos, Uber M3, InfluxDB or TimescaleDB. See vertical scalability benchmarks.

So try single-node VictoriaMetrics at first and then switch to the cluster version if you still need horizontally scalable long-term remote storage for really large Prometheus deployments. Contact us for enterprise support.

Alerting

It is recommended using vmalert for alerting.

Additionally, alerting can be set up with the following tools:

• With Prometheus - see the corresponding docs.
• With Promxy - see the corresponding docs.
• With Grafana - see the corresponding docs.

Security

General security recommendations:

• All the VictoriaMetrics components must run in protected private networks without direct access from untrusted networks such as Internet. The exception is vmauth and vmgateway.
• All the requests from untrusted networks to VictoriaMetrics components must go through auth proxy such as vmauth or vmgateway. The proxy must be set up with proper authentication and authorization.
• Prefer using lists of allowed API endpoints, while disallowing access to other endpoints when configuring auth proxy in front of VictoriaMetrics components.

VictoriaMetrics provides the following security-related command-line flags:

• -tls, -tlsCertFile and -tlsKeyFile for switching from HTTP to HTTPS.
• -httpAuth.username and -httpAuth.password for protecting all the HTTP endpoints with HTTP Basic Authentication.
• -deleteAuthKey for protecting /api/v1/admin/tsdb/delete_series endpoint. See how to delete time series.
• -snapshotAuthKey for protecting /snapshot* endpoints. See how to work with snapshots.
• -forceMergeAuthKey for protecting /internal/force_merge endpoint. See force merge docs.
• -search.resetCacheAuthKey for protecting /internal/resetRollupResultCache endpoint. See backfilling for more details.
• -configAuthKey for protecting /config endpoint, since it may contain sensitive information such as passwords.
• -flagsAuthKey for protecting /flags endpoint.
• -pprofAuthKey for protecting /debug/pprof/* endpoints, which can be used for profiling.
• -denyQueryTracing for disallowing query tracing.

Explicitly set internal network interface for TCP and UDP ports for data ingestion with Graphite and OpenTSDB formats. For example, substitute -graphiteListenAddr=:2003 with -graphiteListenAddr=<internal_iface_ip>:2003. This protects from unexpected requests from untrusted network interfaces.

VictoriaMetrics has achieved security certifications for Database Software Development and Software-Based Monitoring Services. We apply strict security measures in everything we do. See our Security page for more details.

Tuning

• No need in tuning for VictoriaMetrics - it uses reasonable defaults for command-line flags, which are automatically adjusted for the available CPU and RAM resources.
• No need in tuning for Operating System - VictoriaMetrics is optimized for default OS settings. The only option is increasing the limit on the number of open files in the OS. The recommendation is not specific for VictoriaMetrics only but also for any service which handles many HTTP connections and stores data on disk.
• VictoriaMetrics is a write-heavy application and its performance depends on disk performance. So be careful with other applications or utilities (like fstrim) which could exhaust disk resources.
• The recommended filesystem is ext4, the recommended persistent storage is persistent HDD-based disk on GCP, since it is protected from hardware failures via internal replication and it can be resized on the fly. If you plan to store more than 1TB of data on ext4 partition or plan extending it to more than 16TB, then the following options are recommended to pass to mkfs.ext4:

mkfs.ext4 ... -O 64bit,huge_file,extent -T huge

Monitoring

VictoriaMetrics exports internal metrics in Prometheus exposition format at /metrics page. These metrics can be scraped via vmagent or Prometheus. Alternatively, single-node VictoriaMetrics can self-scrape the metrics when -selfScrapeInterval command-line flag is set to duration greater than 0. For example, -selfScrapeInterval=10s would enable self-scraping of /metrics page with 10 seconds interval.

Official Grafana dashboards available for single-node and clustered VictoriaMetrics. See an alternative dashboard for clustered VictoriaMetrics created by community.

Graphs on the dashboards contain useful hints - hover the i icon in the top left corner of each graph to read it.

We recommend setting up alerts via vmalert or via Prometheus.

VictoriaMetrics exposes currently running queries and their execution times at /api/v1/status/active_queries page.

VictoriaMetrics exposes queries, which take the most time to execute, at /api/v1/status/top_queries page.

See also VictoriaMetrics Monitoring and troubleshooting docs.

TSDB stats

VictoriaMetrics returns TSDB stats at /api/v1/status/tsdb page in the way similar to Prometheus - see these Prometheus docs. VictoriaMetrics accepts the following optional query args at /api/v1/status/tsdb page:

• topN=N where N is the number of top entries to return in the response. By default top 10 entries are returned.
• date=YYYY-MM-DD where YYYY-MM-DD is the date for collecting the stats. By default the stats is collected for the current day. Pass date=1970-01-01 in order to collect global stats across all the days.
• focusLabel=LABEL_NAME returns label values with the highest number of time series for the given LABEL_NAME in the seriesCountByFocusLabelValue list.
• match[]=SELECTOR where SELECTOR is an arbitrary time series selector for series to take into account during stats calculation. By default all the series are taken into account.
• extra_label=LABEL=VALUE. See these docs for more details.

VictoriaMetrics provides an UI on top of /api/v1/status/tsdb - see cardinality explorer docs.

Query tracing

VictoriaMetrics supports query tracing, which can be used for determining bottlenecks during query processing. This is like EXPLAIN ANALYZE from Postgresql.

Query tracing can be enabled for a specific query by passing trace=1 query arg. In this case VictoriaMetrics puts query trace into trace field in the output JSON.

For example, the following command:

curl http://localhost:8428/api/v1/query_range -d 'query=2*rand()' -d 'start=-1h' -d 'step=1m' -d 'trace=1' | jq '.trace'

would return the following trace:

{
  "duration_msec": 0.099,
  "message": "/api/v1/query_range: start=1654034340000, end=1654037880000, step=60000, query=\"2*rand()\": series=1",
  "children": [
    {
      "duration_msec": 0.034,
      "message": "eval: query=2 * rand(), timeRange=[1654034340000..1654037880000], step=60000, mayCache=true: series=1, points=60, pointsPerSeries=60",
      "children": [
        {
          "duration_msec": 0.032,
          "message": "binary op \"*\": series=1",
          "children": [
            {
              "duration_msec": 0.009,
              "message": "eval: query=2, timeRange=[1654034340000..1654037880000], step=60000, mayCache=true: series=1, points=60, pointsPerSeries=60"
            },
            {
              "duration_msec": 0.017,
              "message": "eval: query=rand(), timeRange=[1654034340000..1654037880000], step=60000, mayCache=true: series=1, points=60, pointsPerSeries=60",
              "children": [
                {
                  "duration_msec": 0.015,
                  "message": "transform rand(): series=1"
                }
              ]
            }
          ]
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "duration_msec": 0.004,
      "message": "sort series by metric name and labels"
    },
    {
      "duration_msec": 0.044,
      "message": "generate /api/v1/query_range response for series=1, points=60"
    }
  ]
}

All the durations and timestamps in traces are in milliseconds.

Query tracing is allowed by default. It can be denied by passing -denyQueryTracing command-line flag to VictoriaMetrics.

VMUI provides an UI:

• for query tracing - just click Trace query checkbox and re-run the query in order to investigate its' trace.
• for exploring custom trace - go to the tab Trace analyzer and upload or paste JSON with trace information.

Cardinality limiter

By default VictoriaMetrics doesn't limit the number of stored time series. The limit can be enforced by setting the following command-line flags:

• -storage.maxHourlySeries - limits the number of time series that can be added during the last hour. Useful for limiting the number of active time series.
• -storage.maxDailySeries - limits the number of time series that can be added during the last day. Useful for limiting daily churn rate.

Both limits can be set simultaneously. If any of these limits is reached, then incoming samples for new time series are dropped. A sample of dropped series is put in the log with WARNING level.

The exceeded limits can be monitored with the following metrics:

• vm_hourly_series_limit_rows_dropped_total - the number of metrics dropped due to exceeded hourly limit on the number of unique time series.

• vm_hourly_series_limit_max_series - the hourly series limit set via -storage.maxHourlySeries command-line flag.

• vm_hourly_series_limit_current_series - the current number of unique series during the last hour. The following query can be useful for alerting when the number of unique series during the last hour exceeds 90% of the -storage.maxHourlySeries:

  vm_hourly_series_limit_current_series / vm_hourly_series_limit_max_series > 0.9
  

• vm_daily_series_limit_rows_dropped_total - the number of metrics dropped due to exceeded daily limit on the number of unique time series.

• vm_daily_series_limit_max_series - the daily series limit set via -storage.maxDailySeries command-line flag.

• vm_daily_series_limit_current_series - the current number of unique series during the last day. The following query can be useful for alerting when the number of unique series during the last day exceeds 90% of the -storage.maxDailySeries:

  vm_daily_series_limit_current_series / vm_daily_series_limit_max_series > 0.9
  

These limits are approximate, so VictoriaMetrics can underflow/overflow the limit by a small percentage (usually less than 1%).

See also more advanced cardinality limiter in vmagent and cardinality explorer docs.

Troubleshooting

• It is recommended to use default command-line flag values (i.e. don't set them explicitly) until the need of tweaking these flag values arises.

• It is recommended inspecting logs during troubleshooting, since they may contain useful information.

• It is recommended upgrading to the latest available release from this page, since the encountered issue could be already fixed there.

• It is recommended to have at least 50% of spare resources for CPU, disk IO and RAM, so VictoriaMetrics could handle short spikes in the workload without performance issues.

• VictoriaMetrics requires free disk space for merging data files to bigger ones. It may slow down when there is no enough free space left. So make sure -storageDataPath directory has at least 20% of free space. The remaining amount of free space can be monitored via vm_free_disk_space_bytes metric. The total size of data stored on the disk can be monitored via sum of vm_data_size_bytes metrics. See also vm_merge_need_free_disk_space metrics, which are set to values higher than 0 if background merge cannot be initiated due to free disk space shortage. The value shows the number of per-month partitions, which would start background merge if they had more free disk space.

• VictoriaMetrics buffers incoming data in memory for up to a few seconds before flushing it to persistent storage. This may lead to the following "issues":

  • Data becomes available for querying in a few seconds after inserting. It is possible to flush in-memory buffers to persistent storage by requesting /internal/force_flush http handler. This handler is mostly needed for testing and debugging purposes.
  • The last few seconds of inserted data may be lost on unclean shutdown (i.e. OOM, kill -9 or hardware reset). See this article for technical details.

• If VictoriaMetrics works slowly and eats more than a CPU core per 100K ingested data points per second, then it is likely you have too many active time series for the current amount of RAM. VictoriaMetrics exposes vm_slow_* metrics such as vm_slow_row_inserts_total and vm_slow_metric_name_loads_total, which could be used as an indicator of low amounts of RAM. It is recommended increasing the amount of RAM on the node with VictoriaMetrics in order to improve ingestion and query performance in this case.

• If the order of labels for the same metrics can change over time (e.g. if metric{k1="v1",k2="v2"} may become metric{k2="v2",k1="v1"}), then it is recommended running VictoriaMetrics with -sortLabels command-line flag in order to reduce memory usage and CPU usage.

• VictoriaMetrics prioritizes data ingestion over data querying. So if it has no enough resources for data ingestion, then data querying may slow down significantly.

• If VictoriaMetrics doesn't work because of certain parts are corrupted due to disk errors, then just remove directories with broken parts. It is safe removing subdirectories under <-storageDataPath>/data/{big,small}/YYYY_MM directories when VictoriaMetrics isn't running. This recovers VictoriaMetrics at the cost of data loss stored in the deleted broken parts. In the future, vmrecover tool will be created for automatic recovering from such errors.

• If you see gaps on the graphs, try resetting the cache by sending request to /internal/resetRollupResultCache. If this removes gaps on the graphs, then it is likely data with timestamps older than -search.cacheTimestampOffset is ingested into VictoriaMetrics. Make sure that data sources have synchronized time with VictoriaMetrics.

  If the gaps are related to irregular intervals between samples, then try adjusting -search.minStalenessInterval command-line flag to value close to the maximum interval between samples.

• If you are switching from InfluxDB or TimescaleDB, then it may be needed to set -search.setLookbackToStep command-line flag. This suppresses default gap filling algorithm used by VictoriaMetrics - by default it assumes each time series is continuous instead of discrete, so it fills gaps between real samples with regular intervals.

• Metrics and labels leading to high cardinality or high churn rate can be determined via cardinality explorer and via /api/v1/status/tsdb endpoint.

• New time series can be logged if -logNewSeries command-line flag is passed to VictoriaMetrics.

• VictoriaMetrics limits the number of labels per each metric with -maxLabelsPerTimeseries command-line flag. This prevents from ingesting metrics with too many labels. It is recommended monitoring vm_metrics_with_dropped_labels_total metric in order to determine whether -maxLabelsPerTimeseries must be adjusted for your workload.

• If you store Graphite metrics like foo.bar.baz in VictoriaMetrics, then {__graphite__="foo.*.baz"} filter can be used for selecting such metrics. See these docs for details.

• VictoriaMetrics ignores NaN values during data ingestion.

See also troubleshooting docs.

Push metrics

All the VictoriaMetrics components support pushing their metrics exposed at /metrics page to remote storage in Prometheus text exposition format. This functionality may be used instead of classic Prometheus-like metrics scraping if VictoriaMetrics components are located in isolated networks, so they cannot be scraped by local vmagent.

The following command-line flags are related to pushing metrics from VictoriaMetrics components:

• -pushmetrics.url - the url to push metrics to. For example, -pushmetrics.url=http://victoria-metrics:8428/api/v1/import/prometheus instructs to push internal metrics to /api/v1/import/prometheus endpoint according to these docs. The -pushmetrics.url can be specified multiple times. In this case metrics are pushed to all the specified urls. The url can contain basic auth params in the form http://user:pass@hostname/api/v1/import/prometheus. Metrics are pushed to the provided -pushmetrics.url in a compressed form with Content-Encoding: gzip request header. This allows reducing the required network bandwidth for metrics push.
• -pushmetrics.extraLabel - labels to add to all the metrics before sending them to -pushmetrics.url. Each label must be specified in the format label="value". It is OK to specify multiple -pushmetrics.extraLabel command-line flags. In this case all the specified labels are added to all the metrics before sending them to all the configured -pushmetrics.url addresses.
• -pushmetrics.interval - the interval between pushes. By default it is set to 10 seconds.

For example, the following command instructs VictoriaMetrics to push metrics from /metrics page to https://maas.victoriametrics.com/api/v1/import/prometheus with user:pass Basic auth. The instance="foobar" and job="vm" labels are added to all the metrics before sending them to the remote storage:

/path/to/victoria-metrics \
  -pushmetrics.url=https://user:pass@maas.victoriametrics.com/api/v1/import/prometheus \
  -pushmetrics.extraLabel='instance="foobar"' \
  -pushmetrics.extraLabel='job="vm"'

Cache removal

VictoriaMetrics uses various internal caches. These caches are stored to <-storageDataPath>/cache directory during graceful shutdown (e.g. when VictoriaMetrics is stopped by sending SIGINT signal). The caches are read on the next VictoriaMetrics startup. Sometimes it is needed to remove such caches on the next startup. This can be performed by placing reset_cache_on_startup file inside the <-storageDataPath>/cache directory before the restart of VictoriaMetrics. See this issue for details.

Cache tuning

VictoriaMetrics uses various in-memory caches for faster data ingestion and query performance. The following metrics for each type of cache are exported at /metrics page:

• vm_cache_size_bytes - the actual cache size
• vm_cache_size_max_bytes - cache size limit
• vm_cache_requests_total - the number of requests to the cache
• vm_cache_misses_total - the number of cache misses
• vm_cache_entries - the number of entries in the cache

Both Grafana dashboards for single-node VictoriaMetrics and clustered VictoriaMetrics contain Caches section with cache metrics visualized. The panels show the current memory usage by each type of cache, and also a cache hit rate. If hit rate is close to 100% then cache efficiency is already very high and does not need any tuning. The panel Cache usage % in Troubleshooting section shows the percentage of used cache size from the allowed size by type. If the percentage is below 100%, then no further tuning needed.

Please note, default cache sizes were carefully adjusted accordingly to the most practical scenarios and workloads. Change the defaults only if you understand the implications and vmstorage has enough free memory to accommodate new cache sizes.

To override the default values see command-line flags with -storage.cacheSize prefix. See the full description of flags here.

Data migration

From VictoriaMetrics

The simplest way to migrate data from one single-node (source) to another (destination), or from one vmstorage node to another do the following:

1. Stop the VictoriaMetrics (source) with kill -INT;
2. Copy (via rsync or any other tool) the entire folder specified via -storageDataPath from the source node to the empty folder at the destination node.
3. Once copy is done, stop the VictoriaMetrics (destination) with kill -INT and verify that its -storageDataPath points to the copied folder from p.2;
4. Start the VictoriaMetrics (destination). The copied data should be now available.

Things to consider when copying data:

1. Data formats between single-node and vmstorage node aren't compatible and can't be copied.
2. Copying data folder means complete replacement of the previous data on destination VictoriaMetrics.

For more complex scenarios like single-to-cluster, cluster-to-single, re-sharding or migrating only a fraction of data - see vmctl. Migrating data from VictoriaMetrics.

From other systems

Use vmctl for data migration. It supports the following data migration types:

• From Prometheus to VictoriaMetrics
• From InfluxDB to VictoriaMetrics
• From VictoriaMetrics to VictoriaMetrics
• From OpenTSDB to VictoriaMetrics

See vmctl docs for more details.

Backfilling

VictoriaMetrics accepts historical data in arbitrary order of time via any supported ingestion method. See how to backfill data with recording rules in vmalert. Make sure that configured -retentionPeriod covers timestamps for the backfilled data.

It is recommended disabling query cache with -search.disableCache command-line flag when writing historical data with timestamps from the past, since the cache assumes that the data is written with the current timestamps. Query cache can be enabled after the backfilling is complete.

An alternative solution is to query /internal/resetRollupResultCache url after backfilling is complete. This will reset the query cache, which could contain incomplete data cached during the backfilling.

Yet another solution is to increase -search.cacheTimestampOffset flag value in order to disable caching for data with timestamps close to the current time. Single-node VictoriaMetrics automatically resets response cache when samples with timestamps older than now - search.cacheTimestampOffset are ingested to it.

Data updates

VictoriaMetrics doesn't support updating already existing sample values to new ones. It stores all the ingested data points for the same time series with identical timestamps. While it is possible substituting old time series with new time series via removal of old time series and then writing new time series, this approach should be used only for one-off updates. It shouldn't be used for frequent updates because of non-zero overhead related to data removal.

Replication

Single-node VictoriaMetrics doesn't support application-level replication. Use cluster version instead. See these docs for details.

Storage-level replication may be offloaded to durable persistent storage such as Google Cloud disks.

See also high availability docs and backup docs.

Backups

VictoriaMetrics supports backups via vmbackup and vmrestore tools. We also provide vmbackupmanager tool for enterprise subscribers. Enterprise binaries can be downloaded and evaluated for free from the releases page.

vmalert

A single-node VictoriaMetrics is capable of proxying requests to vmalert when -vmalert.proxyURL flag is set. Use this feature for the following cases:

• for proxying requests from Grafana Alerting UI;
• for accessing vmalert's UI through single-node VictoriaMetrics Web interface.

For accessing vmalert's UI through single-node VictoriaMetrics configure -vmalert.proxyURL flag and visit http://<victoriametrics-addr>:8428/vmalert/ link.

Benchmarks

Note, that vendors (including VictoriaMetrics) are often biased when doing such tests. E.g. they try highlighting the best parts of their product, while highlighting the worst parts of competing products. So we encourage users and all independent third parties to conduct their benchmarks for various products they are evaluating in production and publish the results.

As a reference, please see benchmarks conducted by VictoriaMetrics team. Please also see the helm chart for running ingestion benchmarks based on node_exporter metrics.

Profiling

VictoriaMetrics provides handlers for collecting the following Go profiles:

• Memory profile. It can be collected with the following command (replace 0.0.0.0 with hostname if needed):

curl http://0.0.0.0:8428/debug/pprof/heap > mem.pprof

• CPU profile. It can be collected with the following command (replace 0.0.0.0 with hostname if needed):

curl http://0.0.0.0:8428/debug/pprof/profile > cpu.pprof

The command for collecting CPU profile waits for 30 seconds before returning.

The collected profiles may be analyzed with go tool pprof. It is safe sharing the collected profiles from security point of view, since they do not contain sensitive information.

Integrations

• Helm charts for single-node and cluster versions of VictoriaMetrics.

• Kubernetes operator for VictoriaMetrics.

• netdata can push data into VictoriaMetrics via Prometheus remote_write API. See these docs.

• go-graphite/carbonapi can use VictoriaMetrics as time series backend. See this example.

• Ansible role for installing cluster VictoriaMetrics (by VictoriaMetrics).

• Ansible role for installing cluster VictoriaMetrics (by community).

• Ansible role for installing single-node VictoriaMetrics (by community).

• Snap package for VictoriaMetrics.

• vmalert-cli - a CLI application for managing vmalert.

Third-party contributions

• Unofficial yum repository (source code)
• Prometheus -> VictoriaMetrics exporter #1
• Prometheus -> VictoriaMetrics exporter #2
• Prometheus Oauth proxy - see this article for details.

Contacts

Contact us with any questions regarding VictoriaMetrics at info@victoriametrics.com.

Community and contributions

Feel free asking any questions regarding VictoriaMetrics:

• slack
• linkedin
• reddit
• telegram-en
• telegram-ru
• articles and talks about VictoriaMetrics in Russian
• google groups

If you like VictoriaMetrics and want to contribute, then we need the following:

• Filing issues and feature requests here.
• Spreading a word about VictoriaMetrics: conference talks, articles, comments, experience sharing with colleagues.
• Updating documentation.

We are open to third-party pull requests provided they follow KISS design principle:

• Prefer simple code and architecture.
• Avoid complex abstractions.
• Avoid magic code and fancy algorithms.
• Avoid big external dependencies.
• Minimize the number of moving parts in the distributed system.
• Avoid automated decisions, which may hurt cluster availability, consistency or performance.

Adhering KISS principle simplifies the resulting code and architecture, so it can be reviewed, understood and verified by many people.

Reporting bugs

Report bugs and propose new features here.

VictoriaMetrics Logo

Zip contains three folders with different image orientations (main color and inverted version).

Files included in each folder:

• 2 JPEG Preview files
• 2 PNG Preview files with transparent background
• 2 EPS Adobe Illustrator EPS10 files

Logo Usage Guidelines

Font used

• Lato Black
• Lato Regular

Color Palette

• HEX #110f0f
• HEX #ffffff

We kindly ask

• Please don't use any other font instead of suggested.
• To keep enough clear space around the logo.
• Do not change spacing, alignment, or relative locations of the design elements.
• Do not change the proportions for any of the design elements or the design itself. You may resize as needed but must retain all proportions.

List of command-line flags

Pass -help to VictoriaMetrics in order to see the list of supported command-line flags with their description:

  -bigMergeConcurrency int
     The maximum number of CPU cores to use for big merges. Default value is used if set to 0
  -cacheExpireDuration duration
     Items are removed from in-memory caches after they aren't accessed for this duration. Lower values may reduce memory usage at the cost of higher CPU usage. See also -prevCacheRemovalPercent (default 30m0s)
  -configAuthKey string
     Authorization key for accessing /config page. It must be passed via authKey query arg
  -csvTrimTimestamp duration
     Trim timestamps when importing csv data to this duration. Minimum practical duration is 1ms. Higher duration (i.e. 1s) may be used for reducing disk space usage for timestamp data (default 1ms)
  -datadog.maxInsertRequestSize size
     The maximum size in bytes of a single DataDog POST request to /api/v1/series
     Supports the following optional suffixes for size values: KB, MB, GB, KiB, MiB, GiB (default 67108864)
  -datadog.sanitizeMetricName
     Sanitize metric names for the ingested DataDog data to comply with DataDog behaviour described at https://docs.datadoghq.com/metrics/custom_metrics/#naming-custom-metrics (default true)
  -dedup.minScrapeInterval duration
     Leave only the last sample in every time series per each discrete interval equal to -dedup.minScrapeInterval > 0. See https://docs.victoriametrics.com/#deduplication and https://docs.victoriametrics.com/#downsampling
  -deleteAuthKey string
     authKey for metrics' deletion via /api/v1/admin/tsdb/delete_series and /tags/delSeries
  -denyQueriesOutsideRetention
     Whether to deny queries outside of the configured -retentionPeriod. When set, then /api/v1/query_range would return '503 Service Unavailable' error for queries with 'from' value outside -retentionPeriod. This may be useful when multiple data sources with distinct retentions are hidden behind query-tee
  -denyQueryTracing
     Whether to disable the ability to trace queries. See https://docs.victoriametrics.com/#query-tracing
  -downsampling.period array
     Comma-separated downsampling periods in the format 'offset:period'. For example, '30d:10m' instructs to leave a single sample per 10 minutes for samples older than 30 days. See https://docs.victoriametrics.com/#downsampling for details. This flag is available only in VictoriaMetrics enterprise. See https://docs.victoriametrics.com/enterprise.html
     Supports an array of values separated by comma or specified via multiple flags.
  -dryRun
     Whether to check only -promscrape.config and then exit. Unknown config entries aren't allowed in -promscrape.config by default. This can be changed with -promscrape.config.strictParse=false command-line flag
  -enableTCP6
     Whether to enable IPv6 for listening and dialing. By default only IPv4 TCP and UDP is used
  -envflag.enable
     Whether to enable reading flags from environment variables additionally to command line. Command line flag values have priority over values from environment vars. Flags are read only from command line if this flag isn't set. See https://docs.victoriametrics.com/#environment-variables for more details
  -envflag.prefix string
     Prefix for environment variables if -envflag.enable is set
  -eula
     By specifying this flag, you confirm that you have an enterprise license and accept the EULA https://victoriametrics.com/assets/VM_EULA.pdf . This flag is available only in VictoriaMetrics enterprise. See https://docs.victoriametrics.com/enterprise.html
  -finalMergeDelay duration
     The delay before starting final merge for per-month partition after no new data is ingested into it. Final merge may require additional disk IO and CPU resources. Final merge may increase query speed and reduce disk space usage in some cases. Zero value disables final merge
  -flagsAuthKey string
     Auth key for /flags endpoint. It must be passed via authKey query arg. It overrides httpAuth.* settings
  -forceFlushAuthKey string
     authKey, which must be passed in query string to /internal/force_flush pages
  -forceMergeAuthKey string
     authKey, which must be passed in query string to /internal/force_merge pages
  -fs.disableMmap
     Whether to use pread() instead of mmap() for reading data files. By default mmap() is used for 64-bit arches and pread() is used for 32-bit arches, since they cannot read data files bigger than 2^32 bytes in memory. mmap() is usually faster for reading small data chunks than pread()
  -graphiteListenAddr string
     TCP and UDP address to listen for Graphite plaintext data. Usually :2003 must be set. Doesn't work if empty
  -graphiteTrimTimestamp duration
     Trim timestamps for Graphite data to this duration. Minimum practical duration is 1s. Higher duration (i.e. 1m) may be used for reducing disk space usage for timestamp data (default 1s)
  -http.connTimeout duration
     Incoming http connections are closed after the configured timeout. This may help to spread the incoming load among a cluster of services behind a load balancer. Please note that the real timeout may be bigger by up to 10% as a protection against the thundering herd problem (default 2m0s)
  -http.disableResponseCompression
     Disable compression of HTTP responses to save CPU resources. By default compression is enabled to save network bandwidth
  -http.idleConnTimeout duration
     Timeout for incoming idle http connections (default 1m0s)
  -http.maxGracefulShutdownDuration duration
     The maximum duration for a graceful shutdown of the HTTP server. A highly loaded server may require increased value for a graceful shutdown (default 7s)
  -http.pathPrefix string
     An optional prefix to add to all the paths handled by http server. For example, if '-http.pathPrefix=/foo/bar' is set, then all the http requests will be handled on '/foo/bar/*' paths. This may be useful for proxied requests. See https://www.robustperception.io/using-external-urls-and-proxies-with-prometheus
  -http.shutdownDelay duration
     Optional delay before http server shutdown. During this delay, the server returns non-OK responses from /health page, so load balancers can route new requests to other servers
  -httpAuth.password string
     Password for HTTP Basic Auth. The authentication is disabled if -httpAuth.username is empty
  -httpAuth.username string
     Username for HTTP Basic Auth. The authentication is disabled if empty. See also -httpAuth.password
  -httpListenAddr string
     TCP address to listen for http connections (default ":8428")
  -import.maxLineLen size
     The maximum length in bytes of a single line accepted by /api/v1/import; the line length can be limited with 'max_rows_per_line' query arg passed to /api/v1/export
     Supports the following optional suffixes for size values: KB, MB, GB, KiB, MiB, GiB (default 104857600)
  -influx.databaseNames array
     Comma-separated list of database names to return from /query and /influx/query API. This can be needed for accepting data from Telegraf plugins such as https://github.com/fangli/fluent-plugin-influxdb
     Supports an array of values separated by comma or specified via multiple flags.
  -influx.maxLineSize size
     The maximum size in bytes for a single InfluxDB line during parsing
     Supports the following optional suffixes for size values: KB, MB, GB, KiB, MiB, GiB (default 262144)
  -influxDBLabel string
     Default label for the DB name sent over '?db={db_name}' query parameter (default "db")
  -influxListenAddr string
     TCP and UDP address to listen for InfluxDB line protocol data. Usually :8089 must be set. Doesn't work if empty. This flag isn't needed when ingesting data over HTTP - just send it to http://<victoriametrics>:8428/write
  -influxMeasurementFieldSeparator string
     Separator for '{measurement}{separator}{field_name}' metric name when inserted via InfluxDB line protocol (default "_")
  -influxSkipMeasurement
     Uses '{field_name}' as a metric name while ignoring '{measurement}' and '-influxMeasurementFieldSeparator'
  -influxSkipSingleField
     Uses '{measurement}' instead of '{measurement}{separator}{field_name}' for metic name if InfluxDB line contains only a single field
  -influxTrimTimestamp duration
     Trim timestamps for InfluxDB line protocol data to this duration. Minimum practical duration is 1ms. Higher duration (i.e. 1s) may be used for reducing disk space usage for timestamp data (default 1ms)
  -insert.maxQueueDuration duration
     The maximum duration for waiting in the queue for insert requests due to -maxConcurrentInserts (default 1m0s)
  -logNewSeries
     Whether to log new series. This option is for debug purposes only. It can lead to performance issues when big number of new series are ingested into VictoriaMetrics
  -loggerDisableTimestamps
     Whether to disable writing timestamps in logs
  -loggerErrorsPerSecondLimit int
     Per-second limit on the number of ERROR messages. If more than the given number of errors are emitted per second, the remaining errors are suppressed. Zero values disable the rate limit
  -loggerFormat string
     Format for logs. Possible values: default, json (default "default")
  -loggerLevel string
     Minimum level of errors to log. Possible values: INFO, WARN, ERROR, FATAL, PANIC (default "INFO")
  -loggerOutput string
     Output for the logs. Supported values: stderr, stdout (default "stderr")
  -loggerTimezone string
     Timezone to use for timestamps in logs. Timezone must be a valid IANA Time Zone. For example: America/New_York, Europe/Berlin, Etc/GMT+3 or Local (default "UTC")
  -loggerWarnsPerSecondLimit int
     Per-second limit on the number of WARN messages. If more than the given number of warns are emitted per second, then the remaining warns are suppressed. Zero values disable the rate limit
  -maxConcurrentInserts int
     The maximum number of concurrent inserts. Default value should work for most cases, since it minimizes the overhead for concurrent inserts. This option is tigthly coupled with -insert.maxQueueDuration (default 16)
  -maxInsertRequestSize size
     The maximum size in bytes of a single Prometheus remote_write API request
     Supports the following optional suffixes for size values: KB, MB, GB, KiB, MiB, GiB (default 33554432)
  -maxLabelValueLen int
     The maximum length of label values in the accepted time series. Longer label values are truncated. In this case the vm_too_long_label_values_total metric at /metrics page is incremented (default 16384)
  -maxLabelsPerTimeseries int
     The maximum number of labels accepted per time series. Superfluous labels are dropped. In this case the vm_metrics_with_dropped_labels_total metric at /metrics page is incremented (default 30)
  -memory.allowedBytes size
     Allowed size of system memory VictoriaMetrics caches may occupy. This option overrides -memory.allowedPercent if set to a non-zero value. Too low a value may increase the cache miss rate usually resulting in higher CPU and disk IO usage. Too high a value may evict too much data from OS page cache resulting in higher disk IO usage
     Supports the following optional suffixes for size values: KB, MB, GB, KiB, MiB, GiB (default 0)
  -memory.allowedPercent float
     Allowed percent of system memory VictoriaMetrics caches may occupy. See also -memory.allowedBytes. Too low a value may increase cache miss rate usually resulting in higher CPU and disk IO usage. Too high a value may evict too much data from OS page cache which will result in higher disk IO usage (default 60)
  -metricsAuthKey string
     Auth key for /metrics endpoint. It must be passed via authKey query arg. It overrides httpAuth.* settings
  -opentsdbHTTPListenAddr string
     TCP address to listen for OpentTSDB HTTP put requests. Usually :4242 must be set. Doesn't work if empty
  -opentsdbListenAddr string
     TCP and UDP address to listen for OpentTSDB metrics. Telnet put messages and HTTP /api/put messages are simultaneously served on TCP port. Usually :4242 must be set. Doesn't work if empty
  -opentsdbTrimTimestamp duration
     Trim timestamps for OpenTSDB 'telnet put' data to this duration. Minimum practical duration is 1s. Higher duration (i.e. 1m) may be used for reducing disk space usage for timestamp data (default 1s)
  -opentsdbhttp.maxInsertRequestSize size
     The maximum size of OpenTSDB HTTP put request
     Supports the following optional suffixes for size values: KB, MB, GB, KiB, MiB, GiB (default 33554432)
  -opentsdbhttpTrimTimestamp duration
     Trim timestamps for OpenTSDB HTTP data to this duration. Minimum practical duration is 1ms. Higher duration (i.e. 1s) may be used for reducing disk space usage for timestamp data (default 1ms)
  -pprofAuthKey string
     Auth key for /debug/pprof/* endpoints. It must be passed via authKey query arg. It overrides httpAuth.* settings
  -precisionBits int
     The number of precision bits to store per each value. Lower precision bits improves data compression at the cost of precision loss (default 64)
  -prevCacheRemovalPercent float
     Items in the previous caches are removed when the percent of requests it serves becomes lower than this value. Higher values reduce memory usage at the cost of higher CPU usage. See also -cacheExpireDuration (default 0.1)
  -promscrape.azureSDCheckInterval duration
     Interval for checking for changes in Azure. This works only if azure_sd_configs is configured in '-promscrape.config' file. See https://docs.victoriametrics.com/sd_configs.html#azure_sd_configs for details (default 1m0s)
  -promscrape.cluster.memberNum string
     The number of number in the cluster of scrapers. It must be an unique value in the range 0 ... promscrape.cluster.membersCount-1 across scrapers in the cluster. Can be specified as pod name of Kubernetes StatefulSet - pod-name-Num, where Num is a numeric part of pod name (default "0")
  -promscrape.cluster.membersCount int
     The number of members in a cluster of scrapers. Each member must have an unique -promscrape.cluster.memberNum in the range 0 ... promscrape.cluster.membersCount-1 . Each member then scrapes roughly 1/N of all the targets. By default cluster scraping is disabled, i.e. a single scraper scrapes all the targets
  -promscrape.cluster.name string
     Optional name of the cluster. If multiple vmagent clusters scrape the same targets, then each cluster must have unique name in order to properly de-duplicate samples received from these clusters. See https://github.com/VictoriaMetrics/VictoriaMetrics/issues/2679
  -promscrape.cluster.replicationFactor int
     The number of members in the cluster, which scrape the same targets. If the replication factor is greater than 1, then the deduplication must be enabled at remote storage side. See https://docs.victoriametrics.com/#deduplication (default 1)
  -promscrape.config string
     Optional path to Prometheus config file with 'scrape_configs' section containing targets to scrape. The path can point to local file and to http url. See https://docs.victoriametrics.com/#how-to-scrape-prometheus-exporters-such-as-node-exporter for details
  -promscrape.config.dryRun
     Checks -promscrape.config file for errors and unsupported fields and then exits. Returns non-zero exit code on parsing errors and emits these errors to stderr. See also -promscrape.config.strictParse command-line flag. Pass -loggerLevel=ERROR if you don't need to see info messages in the output.
  -promscrape.config.strictParse
     Whether to deny unsupported fields in -promscrape.config . Set to false in order to silently skip unsupported fields (default true)
  -promscrape.configCheckInterval duration
     Interval for checking for changes in '-promscrape.config' file. By default the checking is disabled. Send SIGHUP signal in order to force config check for changes
  -promscrape.consul.waitTime duration
     Wait time used by Consul service discovery. Default value is used if not set
  -promscrape.consulSDCheckInterval duration
     Interval for checking for changes in Consul. This works only if consul_sd_configs is configured in '-promscrape.config' file. See https://docs.victoriametrics.com/sd_configs.html#consul_sd_configs for details (default 30s)
  -promscrape.digitaloceanSDCheckInterval duration
     Interval for checking for changes in digital ocean. This works only if digitalocean_sd_configs is configured in '-promscrape.config' file. See https://docs.victoriametrics.com/sd_configs.html#digitalocean_sd_configs for details (default 1m0s)
  -promscrape.disableCompression
     Whether to disable sending 'Accept-Encoding: gzip' request headers to all the scrape targets. This may reduce CPU usage on scrape targets at the cost of higher network bandwidth utilization. It is possible to set 'disable_compression: true' individually per each 'scrape_config' section in '-promscrape.config' for fine grained control
  -promscrape.disableKeepAlive
     Whether to disable HTTP keep-alive connections when scraping all the targets. This may be useful when targets has no support for HTTP keep-alive connection. It is possible to set 'disable_keepalive: true' individually per each 'scrape_config' section in '-promscrape.config' for fine grained control. Note that disabling HTTP keep-alive may increase load on both vmagent and scrape targets
  -promscrape.discovery.concurrency int
     The maximum number of concurrent requests to Prometheus autodiscovery API (Consul, Kubernetes, etc.) (default 100)
  -promscrape.discovery.concurrentWaitTime duration
     The maximum duration for waiting to perform API requests if more than -promscrape.discovery.concurrency requests are simultaneously performed (default 1m0s)
  -promscrape.dnsSDCheckInterval duration
     Interval for checking for changes in dns. This works only if dns_sd_configs is configured in '-promscrape.config' file. See https://docs.victoriametrics.com/sd_configs.html#dns_sd_configs for details (default 30s)
  -promscrape.dockerSDCheckInterval duration
     Interval for checking for changes in docker. This works only if docker_sd_configs is configured in '-promscrape.config' file. See https://docs.victoriametrics.com/sd_configs.html#docker_sd_configs for details (default 30s)
  -promscrape.dockerswarmSDCheckInterval duration
     Interval for checking for changes in dockerswarm. This works only if dockerswarm_sd_configs is configured in '-promscrape.config' file. See https://docs.victoriametrics.com/sd_configs.html#dockerswarm_sd_configs for details (default 30s)
  -promscrape.dropOriginalLabels
     Whether to drop original labels for scrape targets at /targets and /api/v1/targets pages. This may be needed for reducing memory usage when original labels for big number of scrape targets occupy big amounts of memory. Note that this reduces debuggability for improper per-target relabeling configs
  -promscrape.ec2SDCheckInterval duration
     Interval for checking for changes in ec2. This works only if ec2_sd_configs is configured in '-promscrape.config' file. See https://docs.victoriametrics.com/sd_configs.html#ec2_sd_configs for details (default 1m0s)
  -promscrape.eurekaSDCheckInterval duration
     Interval for checking for changes in eureka. This works only if eureka_sd_configs is configured in '-promscrape.config' file. See https://docs.victoriametrics.com/sd_configs.html#eureka_sd_configs for details (default 30s)
  -promscrape.fileSDCheckInterval duration
     Interval for checking for changes in 'file_sd_config'. See https://docs.victoriametrics.com/sd_configs.html#file_sd_configs for details (default 1m0s)
  -promscrape.gceSDCheckInterval duration
     Interval for checking for changes in gce. This works only if gce_sd_configs is configured in '-promscrape.config' file. See https://docs.victoriametrics.com/sd_configs.html#gce_sd_configs for details (default 1m0s)
  -promscrape.httpSDCheckInterval duration
     Interval for checking for changes in http endpoint service discovery. This works only if http_sd_configs is configured in '-promscrape.config' file. See https://docs.victoriametrics.com/sd_configs.html#http_sd_configs for details (default 1m0s)
  -promscrape.kubernetes.apiServerTimeout duration
     How frequently to reload the full state from Kubernetes API server (default 30m0s)
  -promscrape.kubernetesSDCheckInterval duration
     Interval for checking for changes in Kubernetes API server. This works only if kubernetes_sd_configs is configured in '-promscrape.config' file. See https://docs.victoriametrics.com/sd_configs.html#kubernetes_sd_configs for details (default 30s)
  -promscrape.maxDroppedTargets int
     The maximum number of droppedTargets to show at /api/v1/targets page. Increase this value if your setup drops more scrape targets during relabeling and you need investigating labels for all the dropped targets. Note that the increased number of tracked dropped targets may result in increased memory usage (default 1000)
  -promscrape.maxResponseHeadersSize size
     The maximum size of http response headers from Prometheus scrape targets
     Supports the following optional suffixes for size values: KB, MB, GB, KiB, MiB, GiB (default 4096)
  -promscrape.maxScrapeSize size
     The maximum size of scrape response in bytes to process from Prometheus targets. Bigger responses are rejected
     Supports the following optional suffixes for size values: KB, MB, GB, KiB, MiB, GiB (default 16777216)
  -promscrape.minResponseSizeForStreamParse size
     The minimum target response size for automatic switching to stream parsing mode, which can reduce memory usage. See https://docs.victoriametrics.com/vmagent.html#stream-parsing-mode
     Supports the following optional suffixes for size values: KB, MB, GB, KiB, MiB, GiB (default 1000000)
  -promscrape.noStaleMarkers
     Whether to disable sending Prometheus stale markers for metrics when scrape target disappears. This option may reduce memory usage if stale markers aren't needed for your setup. This option also disables populating the scrape_series_added metric. See https://prometheus.io/docs/concepts/jobs_instances/#automatically-generated-labels-and-time-series
  -promscrape.openstackSDCheckInterval duration
     Interval for checking for changes in openstack API server. This works only if openstack_sd_configs is configured in '-promscrape.config' file. See https://docs.victoriametrics.com/sd_configs.html#openstack_sd_configs for details (default 30s)
  -promscrape.seriesLimitPerTarget int
     Optional limit on the number of unique time series a single scrape target can expose. See https://docs.victoriametrics.com/vmagent.html#cardinality-limiter for more info
  -promscrape.streamParse
     Whether to enable stream parsing for metrics obtained from scrape targets. This may be useful for reducing memory usage when millions of metrics are exposed per each scrape target. It is posible to set 'stream_parse: true' individually per each 'scrape_config' section in '-promscrape.config' for fine grained control
  -promscrape.suppressDuplicateScrapeTargetErrors
     Whether to suppress 'duplicate scrape target' errors; see https://docs.victoriametrics.com/vmagent.html#troubleshooting for details
  -promscrape.suppressScrapeErrors
     Whether to suppress scrape errors logging. The last error for each target is always available at '/targets' page even if scrape errors logging is suppressed. See also -promscrape.suppressScrapeErrorsDelay
  -promscrape.suppressScrapeErrorsDelay duration
     The delay for suppressing repeated scrape errors logging per each scrape targets. This may be used for reducing the number of log lines related to scrape errors. See also -promscrape.suppressScrapeErrors
  -promscrape.yandexcloudSDCheckInterval duration
     Interval for checking for changes in Yandex Cloud API. This works only if yandexcloud_sd_configs is configured in '-promscrape.config' file. See https://docs.victoriametrics.com/sd_configs.html#yandexcloud_sd_configs for details (default 30s)
  -pushmetrics.extraLabel array
     Optional labels to add to metrics pushed to -pushmetrics.url . For example, -pushmetrics.extraLabel='instance="foo"' adds instance="foo" label to all the metrics pushed to -pushmetrics.url
     Supports an array of values separated by comma or specified via multiple flags.
  -pushmetrics.interval duration
     Interval for pushing metrics to -pushmetrics.url (default 10s)
  -pushmetrics.url array
     Optional URL to push metrics exposed at /metrics page. See https://docs.victoriametrics.com/#push-metrics . By default metrics exposed at /metrics page aren't pushed to any remote storage
     Supports an array of values separated by comma or specified via multiple flags.
  -relabelConfig string
     Optional path to a file with relabeling rules, which are applied to all the ingested metrics. The path can point either to local file or to http url. See https://docs.victoriametrics.com/#relabeling for details. The config is reloaded on SIGHUP signal
  -relabelDebug
     Whether to log metrics before and after relabeling with -relabelConfig. If the -relabelDebug is enabled, then the metrics aren't sent to storage. This is useful for debugging the relabeling configs
  -retentionFilter array
     Retention filter in the format 'filter:retention'. For example, '{env="dev"}:3d' configures the retention for time series with env="dev" label to 3 days. See https://docs.victoriametrics.com/#retention-filters for details. This flag is available only in VictoriaMetrics enterprise. See https://docs.victoriametrics.com/enterprise.html
     Supports an array of values separated by comma or specified via multiple flags.
  -retentionPeriod value
     Data with timestamps outside the retentionPeriod is automatically deleted. See also -retentionFilter
     The following optional suffixes are supported: h (hour), d (day), w (week), y (year). If suffix isn't set, then the duration is counted in months (default 1)
  -retentionTimezoneOffset duration
     The offset for performing indexdb rotation. If set to 0, then the indexdb rotation is performed at 4am UTC time per each -retentionPeriod. If set to 2h, then the indexdb rotation is performed at 4am EET time (the timezone with +2h offset)
  -search.cacheTimestampOffset duration
     The maximum duration since the current time for response data, which is always queried from the original raw data, without using the response cache. Increase this value if you see gaps in responses due to time synchronization issues between VictoriaMetrics and data sources. See also -search.disableAutoCacheReset (default 5m0s)
  -search.disableAutoCacheReset
     Whether to disable automatic response cache reset if a sample with timestamp outside -search.cacheTimestampOffset is inserted into VictoriaMetrics
  -search.disableCache
     Whether to disable response caching. This may be useful during data backfilling
  -search.graphiteMaxPointsPerSeries int
     The maximum number of points per series Graphite render API can return. This flag is available only in VictoriaMetrics enterprise. See https://docs.victoriametrics.com/enterprise.html (default 1000000)
  -search.graphiteStorageStep duration
     The interval between datapoints stored in the database. It is used at Graphite Render API handler for normalizing the interval between datapoints in case it isn't normalized. It can be overridden by sending 'storage_step' query arg to /render API or by sending the desired interval via 'Storage-Step' http header during querying /render API. This flag is available only in VictoriaMetrics enterprise. See https://docs.victoriametrics.com/enterprise.html (default 10s)
  -search.latencyOffset duration
     The time when data points become visible in query results after the collection. Too small value can result in incomplete last points for query results (default 30s)
  -search.logSlowQueryDuration duration
     Log queries with execution time exceeding this value. Zero disables slow query logging (default 5s)
  -search.maxConcurrentRequests int
     The maximum number of concurrent search requests. It shouldn't be high, since a single request can saturate all the CPU cores, while many concurrently executed requests may require high amounts of memory. See also -search.maxQueueDuration and -search.maxMemoryPerQuery (default 8)
  -search.maxExportDuration duration
     The maximum duration for /api/v1/export call (default 720h0m0s)
  -search.maxExportSeries int
     The maximum number of time series, which can be returned from /api/v1/export* APIs. This option allows limiting memory usage (default 10000000)
  -search.maxFederateSeries int
     The maximum number of time series, which can be returned from /federate. This option allows limiting memory usage (default 1000000)
  -search.maxGraphiteSeries int
     The maximum number of time series, which can be scanned during queries to Graphite Render API. See https://docs.victoriametrics.com/#graphite-render-api-usage . This flag is available only in VictoriaMetrics enterprise. See https://docs.victoriametrics.com/enterprise.html (default 300000)
  -search.maxLookback duration
     Synonym to -search.lookback-delta from Prometheus. The value is dynamically detected from interval between time series datapoints if not set. It can be overridden on per-query basis via max_lookback arg. See also '-search.maxStalenessInterval' flag, which has the same meaining due to historical reasons
  -search.maxMemoryPerQuery size
     The maximum amounts of memory a single query may consume. Queries requiring more memory are rejected. The total memory limit for concurrently executed queries can be estimated as -search.maxMemoryPerQuery multiplied by -search.maxConcurrentRequests
     Supports the following optional suffixes for size values: KB, MB, GB, KiB, MiB, GiB (default 0)
  -search.maxPointsPerTimeseries int
     The maximum points per a single timeseries returned from /api/v1/query_range. This option doesn't limit the number of scanned raw samples in the database. The main purpose of this option is to limit the number of per-series points returned to graphing UI such as VMUI or Grafana. There is no sense in setting this limit to values bigger than the horizontal resolution of the graph (default 30000)
  -search.maxPointsSubqueryPerTimeseries int
     The maximum number of points per series, which can be generated by subquery. See https://valyala.medium.com/prometheus-subqueries-in-victoriametrics-9b1492b720b3 (default 100000)
  -search.maxQueryDuration duration
     The maximum duration for query execution (default 30s)
  -search.maxQueryLen size
     The maximum search query length in bytes
     Supports the following optional suffixes for size values: KB, MB, GB, KiB, MiB, GiB (default 16384)
  -search.maxQueueDuration duration
     The maximum time the request waits for execution when -search.maxConcurrentRequests limit is reached; see also -search.maxQueryDuration (default 10s)
  -search.maxSamplesPerQuery int
     The maximum number of raw samples a single query can process across all time series. This protects from heavy queries, which select unexpectedly high number of raw samples. See also -search.maxSamplesPerSeries (default 1000000000)
  -search.maxSamplesPerSeries int
     The maximum number of raw samples a single query can scan per each time series. This option allows limiting memory usage (default 30000000)
  -search.maxSeries int
     The maximum number of time series, which can be returned from /api/v1/series. This option allows limiting memory usage (default 30000)
  -search.maxStalenessInterval duration
     The maximum interval for staleness calculations. By default it is automatically calculated from the median interval between samples. This flag could be useful for tuning Prometheus data model closer to Influx-style data model. See https://prometheus.io/docs/prometheus/latest/querying/basics/#staleness for details. See also '-search.setLookbackToStep' flag
  -search.maxStatusRequestDuration duration
     The maximum duration for /api/v1/status/* requests (default 5m0s)
  -search.maxStepForPointsAdjustment duration
     The maximum step when /api/v1/query_range handler adjusts points with timestamps closer than -search.latencyOffset to the current time. The adjustment is needed because such points may contain incomplete data (default 1m0s)
  -search.maxTSDBStatusSeries int
     The maximum number of time series, which can be processed during the call to /api/v1/status/tsdb. This option allows limiting memory usage (default 10000000)
  -search.maxTagKeys int
     The maximum number of tag keys returned from /api/v1/labels (default 100000)
  -search.maxTagValueSuffixesPerSearch int
     The maximum number of tag value suffixes returned from /metrics/find (default 100000)
  -search.maxTagValues int
     The maximum number of tag values returned from /api/v1/label/<label_name>/values (default 100000)
  -search.maxUniqueTimeseries int
     The maximum number of unique time series, which can be selected during /api/v1/query and /api/v1/query_range queries. This option allows limiting memory usage (default 300000)
  -search.minStalenessInterval duration
     The minimum interval for staleness calculations. This flag could be useful for removing gaps on graphs generated from time series with irregular intervals between samples. See also '-search.maxStalenessInterval'
  -search.noStaleMarkers
     Set this flag to true if the database doesn't contain Prometheus stale markers, so there is no need in spending additional CPU time on its handling. Staleness markers may exist only in data obtained from Prometheus scrape targets
  -search.queryStats.lastQueriesCount int
     Query stats for /api/v1/status/top_queries is tracked on this number of last queries. Zero value disables query stats tracking (default 20000)
  -search.queryStats.minQueryDuration duration
     The minimum duration for queries to track in query stats at /api/v1/status/top_queries. Queries with lower duration are ignored in query stats (default 1ms)
  -search.resetCacheAuthKey string
     Optional authKey for resetting rollup cache via /internal/resetRollupResultCache call
  -search.setLookbackToStep
     Whether to fix lookback interval to 'step' query arg value. If set to true, the query model becomes closer to InfluxDB data model. If set to true, then -search.maxLookback and -search.maxStalenessInterval are ignored
  -search.treatDotsAsIsInRegexps
     Whether to treat dots as is in regexp label filters used in queries. For example, foo{bar=~"a.b.c"} will be automatically converted to foo{bar=~"a\\.b\\.c"}, i.e. all the dots in regexp filters will be automatically escaped in order to match only dot char instead of matching any char. Dots in ".+", ".*" and ".{n}" regexps aren't escaped. This option is DEPRECATED in favor of {__graphite__="a.*.c"} syntax for selecting metrics matching the given Graphite metrics filter
  -selfScrapeInstance string
     Value for 'instance' label, which is added to self-scraped metrics (default "self")
  -selfScrapeInterval duration
     Interval for self-scraping own metrics at /metrics page
  -selfScrapeJob string
     Value for 'job' label, which is added to self-scraped metrics (default "victoria-metrics")
  -smallMergeConcurrency int
     The maximum number of CPU cores to use for small merges. Default value is used if set to 0
  -snapshotAuthKey string
     authKey, which must be passed in query string to /snapshot* pages
  -snapshotsMaxAge value
     Automatically delete snapshots older than -snapshotsMaxAge if it is set to non-zero duration. Make sure that backup process has enough time to finish the backup before the corresponding snapshot is automatically deleted
     The following optional suffixes are supported: h (hour), d (day), w (week), y (year). If suffix isn't set, then the duration is counted in months (default 0)
  -sortLabels
     Whether to sort labels for incoming samples before writing them to storage. This may be needed for reducing memory usage at storage when the order of labels in incoming samples is random. For example, if m{k1="v1",k2="v2"} may be sent as m{k2="v2",k1="v1"}. Enabled sorting for labels can slow down ingestion performance a bit
  -storage.cacheSizeIndexDBDataBlocks size
     Overrides max size for indexdb/dataBlocks cache. See https://docs.victoriametrics.com/Single-server-VictoriaMetrics.html#cache-tuning
     Supports the following optional suffixes for size values: KB, MB, GB, KiB, MiB, GiB (default 0)
  -storage.cacheSizeIndexDBIndexBlocks size
     Overrides max size for indexdb/indexBlocks cache. See https://docs.victoriametrics.com/Single-server-VictoriaMetrics.html#cache-tuning
     Supports the following optional suffixes for size values: KB, MB, GB, KiB, MiB, GiB (default 0)
  -storage.cacheSizeIndexDBTagFilters size
     Overrides max size for indexdb/tagFiltersToMetricIDs cache. See https://docs.victoriametrics.com/Single-server-VictoriaMetrics.html#cache-tuning
     Supports the following optional suffixes for size values: KB, MB, GB, KiB, MiB, GiB (default 0)
  -storage.cacheSizeStorageTSID size
     Overrides max size for storage/tsid cache. See https://docs.victoriametrics.com/Single-server-VictoriaMetrics.html#cache-tuning
     Supports the following optional suffixes for size values: KB, MB, GB, KiB, MiB, GiB (default 0)
  -storage.maxDailySeries int
     The maximum number of unique series can be added to the storage during the last 24 hours. Excess series are logged and dropped. This can be useful for limiting series churn rate. See https://docs.victoriametrics.com/#cardinality-limiter . See also -storage.maxHourlySeries
  -storage.maxHourlySeries int
     The maximum number of unique series can be added to the storage during the last hour. Excess series are logged and dropped. This can be useful for limiting series cardinality. See https://docs.victoriametrics.com/#cardinality-limiter . See also -storage.maxDailySeries
  -storage.minFreeDiskSpaceBytes size
     The minimum free disk space at -storageDataPath after which the storage stops accepting new data
     Supports the following optional suffixes for size values: KB, MB, GB, KiB, MiB, GiB (default 10000000)
  -storageDataPath string
     Path to storage data (default "victoria-metrics-data")
  -tls
     Whether to enable TLS for incoming HTTP requests at -httpListenAddr (aka https). -tlsCertFile and -tlsKeyFile must be set if -tls is set
  -tlsCertFile string
     Path to file with TLS certificate if -tls is set. Prefer ECDSA certs instead of RSA certs as RSA certs are slower. The provided certificate file is automatically re-read every second, so it can be dynamically updated
  -tlsCipherSuites array
     Optional list of TLS cipher suites for incoming requests over HTTPS if -tls is set. See the list of supported cipher suites at https://pkg.go.dev/crypto/tls#pkg-constants
     Supports an array of values separated by comma or specified via multiple flags.
  -tlsKeyFile string
     Path to file with TLS key if -tls is set. The provided key file is automatically re-read every second, so it can be dynamically updated
  -tlsMinVersion string
     Optional minimum TLS version to use for incoming requests over HTTPS if -tls is set. Supported values: TLS10, TLS11, TLS12, TLS13
  -usePromCompatibleNaming
     Whether to replace characters unsupported by Prometheus with underscores in the ingested metric names and label names. For example, foo.bar{a.b='c'} is transformed into foo_bar{a_b='c'} during data ingestion if this flag is set. See https://prometheus.io/docs/concepts/data_model/#metric-names-and-labels
  -version
     Show VictoriaMetrics version
  -vmalert.proxyURL string
     Optional URL for proxying requests to vmalert. For example, if -vmalert.proxyURL=http://vmalert:8880 , then alerting API requests such as /api/v1/rules from Grafana will be proxied to http://vmalert:8880/api/v1/rules