VictoriaMetrics best practices

Install Recommendation#

It is recommended running the latest available release of VictoriaMetrics from this page, since it contains all the bugfixes and enhancements.

There is no need to tune VictoriaMetrics because it uses reasonable defaults for command-line flags. These flags are automatically adjusted for the available CPU and RAM resources. There is no need in Operating System tuning because VictoriaMetrics is optimized for default OS settings. The only option is to increase the limit on the number of open files in the OS, so VictoriaMetrics could accept more incoming connections and could keep open more data files.

Filesystem#

The recommended filesystem for VictoriaMetrics is ext4. If you plan to store more than 1TB of data on ext4 partition or plan to extend 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

VictoriaMetrics should work OK with other filesystems too.

Operating System#

VictoriaMetrics is production-ready for the following operating systems:

  • Linux (Alpine, Ubuntu, Debian, RedHat, etc.)
  • FreeBSD
  • OpenBSD
  • Solaris/SmartOS

There is an experimental support of VictoriaMetrics components for Windows.

VictoriaMetrics can run also on MacOS for testing and development purposes.

Supported Architectures#

  • Linux: i386, amd64, arm, arm64, ppc64le
  • FreeBSD: i386, amd64, arm
  • OpenBSD: i386, amd64, arm
  • Solaris/SmartOS: i386, amd64
  • MacOS: amd64, arm64 (for testing and development purposes)
  • Windows: amd64

Upgrade procedure#

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

It is also safe to downgrade to the previous version unless release notes say otherwise.

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

  • Send SIGINT signal to VictoriaMetrics process so that it is stopped gracefully.
  • Wait until the process stops. This can take a few seconds.
  • Start the upgraded VictoriaMetrics.

Backup Recommendations#

VictoriaMetrics supports backups via vmbackup and vmrestore tools. There is also vmbackupmanager, which simplifies backup automation.

Technical Support and Services#

There are the following channels for providing technical support for VictoriaMetrics:

We also provide Enterprise support.