Tools to backfill Prometheus remote storage

This repo is a fork of the prometheus-remote-backfill project that adds Yugabyte-specific enhancements to make it easier to export and collect metrics from YugabyteDB Anywhere on a per-Universe basis.

The promdump tool remains backward compatible but adds additional modes and flags to streamline collection of Yugabyte metrics data.

• promdump - dumps time series data from Prometheus server into JSON files.

This tools can be used to backfill metric data from Prometheus into other metrics stores such as VictoriaMetrics. JSON files are used as intermediary storage format to allow manual changes to metric metadata (metric name and labels).

The promremotewrite utility that was included in the original prometheus-remote-backfill has been removed due to outdated dependencies with known security issues.

promdump

By default promdump issues a separate query for each 24 hours worth of data, and writes each resulting batch of samples into a separate file. First is necessary to avoid overloading Prometheus server with queries with very large response size, second is to prevent promremotewrite from using too much RAM (each JSON file needs to be loaded in memory).

Yugabyte metrics have very high cardinality (lots of label values, resulting in many time series per metric name), so this version of the utility has a back-off mechanism, where if the Prometheus server returns a "too many samples" error, the batch size will be halved and the operation retried.

promremotewrite

This utility is not used at Yugabyte. It has been removed from the repo due to known vulnerabilities in its dependencies.

Example

Dump all data of node_filesystem_free metric for the last year, issuing a separate query for each 12hrs of data, storing 24hrs worth of data in each file:

promdump --url=http://localhost:9090 \
  --metric='node_filesystem_free{job="node"}' \
  --out=fs_free.json --batch=12h --batches_per_file=2 --period=8760h

Command Line Reference

Note that this section is a reference guide for the complete command line interface of the utility. The vast majority of these flags override a specific behaviour and should only be used situationally. The set of required flags is very small.

Flags may be specified using a single preceding dash (-flagname) or two preceding dashes (--flagname).

Flag names containing multiple words use underscore (_) as a word separator (--multi_word_flag).

Most flags may be specified with the equals sign (=) or space ( ) between the flag name and value. However, this may lead to ambiguity that causes command failure or inconsistent behaviour, so it is recommended to always use the equals sign as the separator (--flagname=value).

Flags that accept multiple values use commas (,) as a separator (--multi_value_flag=foo,bar,baz).

Instant Flags

Flags in this section are of the "print something and exit" variety.

Canonical Flag Name	Alias(es)	Added In	Default	Required?	Description
--help	-h	Initial Release		Optional	Prints the list of available command line flags and brief descriptions, then exits
--version	-v	v0.1.2		Optional	Prints the promdump version number, commit hash, and build date, then exits.
--list_universes		v0.5.1		Optional	Prints the list of Universes known to YBA, then exits. Requires a --yba_api_token.

Logging

Flags in this section control the logging behaviour of the utility.

Canonical Flag Name	Alias(es)	Added In	Default	Required?	Description
--debug		v0.1.3	false	Optional	Enables debug logging.
--log_to_console		v0.5.2	true	Optional	Write log messages to the console.
--log_to_file		v0.5.2	true	Optional	Write log messages to a log file.
--log_filename		v0.5.2	promdump.log	Optional	Specifies the name of the file to which to write log messages when --log_to_file is true.

Prometheus Flags

Flags in this section control the connection to Prometheus.

Canonical Flag Name	Alias(es)	Added In	Default	Required?	Description
--url		Initial Release	http://localhost:9090	Optional	The URL to use when querying the YBA Prometheus server.
--skip_prom_host_verification		v0.5.1	false	Optional	Disables certificate verification for TLS connections to the YBA Prometheus. Note that the YBA Prometheus ships with TLS disabled. This flag will be ignored if the --url flag uses http as the protocol.
--prometheus_api_timeout		v0.5.1	10	Optional	Requests to the Prometheus API will time out at the HTTP layer after this many seconds.
--prometheus_retry_count		v0.6.0	10	Optional	How many times to retry Prometheus API requests before aborting the dump.
--prometheus_retry_backoff		v0.6.0	true	Optional	Whether to apply a backoff algorithm to Prometheus API requests. If set to true, extends the retry delay between retries.
--prometheus_retry_delay		v0.6.0	1	Optional	The initial retry delay for Prometheus requests in seconds. The actual delay depends on whether backoff is enabled.
--prometheus_retry_max_backoff		v0.6.0	15	Optional	The maximum retry delay for Prometheus requests in seconds. Only used if backoff is enabled.

YBA API Mode

In YBA API mode, promdump will connect to the specified YBA node and use the provided --universe_name or --universe_uuid value to look up the node_prefix needed to export the Yugabyte metrics for the corresponding Universe.

Canonical Flag Name	Alias(es)	Added In	Default	Required?	Description
--yba_api_token		v0.5.1		Required	A YBA API authentication token for a user account with the privileges required to list customers and list Universes.
--universe_name		v0.5.1		Required*	The name of the Universe for which to export metrics. *One of --universe_name or --universe_uuid is required in YBA API mode.
--universe_uuid		v0.5.1		Required*	The UUID of the Universe for which to export metrics. *One of --universe_name or --universe_uuid is required in YBA API mode.
‑‑yba_api_hostname	‑‑yba_hostname	v0.5.1	localhost	Optional	The hostname or IP address to use when making YBA API calls.
--skip_yba_host_verification		v0.5.1	false	Optional	Disables certificate verification for TLS connections to the YBA API. WARNING: This flag instructs promdump to accept the YBA node's TLS certificate regardless of validity, which may be a potential security risk. It is strongly recommended to use certificates issued by a certificate authority on production systems.
--yba_api_use_tls		v0.5.1	true	Optional	Set to false to disable TLS for connections to the YBA API. With TLS disabled, the utility will attempt to make HTTP requests to the YBA API using an unencrypted connection on port 80. Disabling TLS is almost always an error.
--yba_api_timeout		v0.5.1	10	Optional	Requests to the YBA API will time out after this many seconds.

Legacy Mode

In Legacy mode, users must provide the node_prefix value for the Universe for which they wish to export the Yugabyte metrics.

Canonical Flag Name	Alias(es)	Added In	Default	Required?	Description
--node_prefix		v0.1.2		Required	The node_prefix value for the Yugabyte Universe for which metrics should be exported. For example, yb-prod-appname. Simple validations will be performed on the specified value, such as verifying that it starts with yb- and that it does not end with a node number.
--node_prefix_validation		v0.3.0	true	Optional	Set to false to disable validation of the node prefix value. This may be required if the customer is using a non-standard environment name or in case of unforeseen issues with the validation.

Manual Mode

In manual mode, the specified PromQL expression will be sent to Prometheus and the resulting metrics written to a series of numbered files starting with the specified file prefix.

Manual mode may be combined with either YBA API mode or Legacy Mode to export the Yugabyte metrics along with a custom metric specification.

Canonical Flag Name	Alias(es)	Added In	Default	Required?	Description
--metric		Initial Release		Required	Specifies a PromQL expression to send to Prometheus for export.
--out		Initial Release		Required	The file prefix to use for writing the specified metric(s) out to disk.

Query Flags

Flags in this section control what metrics data the utility requests from Prometheus for export.

Time Window

The three flags that control the time window for which to export the Prometheus data are --start_time, --end_time, and --period. Up to two of these flags may be specified.

If all three time window flags are omitted, the utility will export the most recent 7 days of data.

If only --period is specified, the utility will export the most recent metrics for the specified period. For example, --period=20m will export the most recent 20 minutes of metrics.

If --period and one of --start_time or --end_time are specified, the utility will export metrics for a window with the specified duration starting at or ending at the specified timestamp.

If --start_time and --end_time are specified, the utility will export metrics that fall between the specified timestamps.

Specifying all three time window flags is an error.

Canonical Flag Name	Alias(es)	Added In	Default	Required?	Description
--start_time		Initial Release		Optional	The timestamp of the start of the window for which to export data. Timestamps must be specified in RFC3339 format, e.g. 2023-03-13T01:00:00-0100. It is recommended to specify timestamps in UTC, e.g. 2023-03-13T00:00:00Z.
--end_time	--timestamp	Initial Release	Now	Optional	The timestamp of the end of the window for which to export data. Timestamps must be specified in RFC3339 format, e.g. 2023-03-13T01:00:00-0100. It is recommended to specify timestamps in UTC, e.g. 2023-03-13T00:00:00Z.
--period		Initial Release	7d	Optional	The length of the time window for which to export data. Units are specified using standard abbreviations such as d for days, h for hours, or m for minutes.

Batching

Flags in this section control how metrics are batched up when requesting data from Prometheus and writing data to export files. Prometheus limits the number of samples that may be loaded into memory by any particular request, so the batch size must be small enough not to exceed this limit.

This fork of the promdump utility performs automatic batch size backoff if Prometheus returns an error indicating that too many samples would be loaded into memory. The backoff mechanism halves the batch size and retries.

Canonical Flag Name	Alias(es)	Added In	Default	Required?	Description
--batch		Initial Release	24h	Optional	The batch duration to use when requesting metrics from Prometheus for export.
--batches_per_file		Initial Release	1	Optional	The number of batches to write into each output file. There is rarely a good reason to change this flag.

Metric Filtering

Flags in this section are applicable to YBA API Mode and Legacy Mode (see below). They do not apply to manual mode.

These flags will enable or disable specific exports or jobs when exporting data from Prometheus. In general, these settings should be left at their defaults unless there is a compelling reason to do otherwise.

Exporters

These metrics are labelled with the export_type label in Prometheus.

Canonical Flag Name	Output Filename	Added In	Default	Required?	Description
--master	master_export.#####	v0.1.2	true	Optional	Enables or disables collection of the metrics for the Yugabyte master process.
--node	node_export.#####	v0.1.2	true	Optional	Enables or disables collection of the node_exporter OS level metrics.
--tserver	tserver_export.#####	v0.1.2	true	Optional	Enables or disables collection of the metrics for the Yugabyte tablet server. These metrics are scraped from the tserver process and mostly cover the storage layer.
--ycql	cql_export.#####	v0.1.2	true	Optional	Enables or disables collection of the metrics for the Cassandra-compatible YCQL query layer. These metrics are scraped from the tserver process.
--ysql	ysql_export.#####	v0.1.2	true	Optional	Enables or disables collection of the metrics for the Postgres-compatible YSQL query layer. These metrics are scraped from the tserver process.

Jobs

These metrics are labelled with the job label in Prometheus.

Canonical Flag Name	Output Filename	Added In	Default	Required?	Description
--platform	platform.#####	v0.1.4	true	Optional	Enables or disables collection of the platform metrics produced by YBA.
--prometheus	prometheus.#####	v0.1.4	false	Optional	Enables or disables collection of the prometheus metrics produced by the YBA Prometheus.

Node Filtering

If metrics are required for specific database nodes (for example, because only a subset of nodes has experienced a problem or because there is a large number of nodes in the Universe), the following flags can be used to export metrics for only the specified nodes.

Canonical Flag Name	Alias(es)	Added In	Default	Required?	Description
--nodes		v0.2.0		Optional	Collect metrics for only the specified subset of nodes. Accepts a comma separated list of node numbers or ranges. For example, --nodes=1,3-6,14 would collect metrics for nodes 1, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 14. Mutually exclusive with --instances.
--instances		v0.2.0		Optional	Collect metrics for only the specified subset of nodes. Accepts a comma separated list of instance names. For example, --instances=yb-prod-appname-n1,yb-prod-appname-n3,yb-prod-appname-n4,yb-prod-appname-n5,yb-prod-appname-n6,yb-prod-appname-n14. Mutually exclusive with --nodes.

Output Flags

Flags in this section control aspects of how the exported data are written to disk.

Canonical Flag Name	Alias(es)	Added In	Default	Required?	Description
--tar		v0.5.1	true	Optional	Controls whether the exported metrics files are packaged into a tar bundle at the end of the run.
--tar_compression_algorithm		v0.5.1	gzip	Optional	The compression algorithm to use when creating a tar bundle. One of gzip, bzip2, or none. Only applicable if --tar is enabled.
--tar_filename		v0.5.1	Generated	Optional	Specifies the filename to use for the tar bundle. If not specified, a default filename of the form promdump-yb-prod-appname-20240704-143423 will be generated based on the node_prefix of the Universe and the date and time that promdump was run.
--keep_files		v0.5.1	false	Optional	By default, the export files generated by promdump will be deleted after the tar bundle has been generated. Set this flag to true to preserve these files.

Compile

docker run --rm \
  -v "$PWD/promdump":/promdump \
  -w /promdump golang:1.19 \
  go build \
  -ldflags=" -X 'main.CommitHash=$(git rev-parse HEAD)' -X 'main.BuildTime=$(date -Iseconds)'"

License

Licensed under MIT license.