CHANGELOG for the year 2020

v1.51.0#

Released at 2020-12-27

• FEATURE: add /api/v1/status/top_queries handler, which returns the most frequently executed queries and queries that took the most time for execution. See https://github.com/VictoriaMetrics/VictoriaMetrics/issues/907

• FEATURE: vmagent: add support for proxy_url config option in Prometheus scrape configs. See https://github.com/VictoriaMetrics/VictoriaMetrics/issues/503

• FEATURE: remove parts with stale data as soon as they go outside the configured -retentionPeriod. Previously such parts may remain active for long periods of time. This should help reducing disk usage for -retentionPeriod smaller than one month.

• FEATURE: vmalert: allow setting multiple values for -notifier.tlsInsecureSkipVerify command-line flag per each -notifier.url.

• BUGFIX: vmalert: properly escape multiline queries when passing them to Grafana. See https://github.com/VictoriaMetrics/VictoriaMetrics/issues/890

• BUGFIX: vmagent: set missing __meta_kubernetes_service_* labels in kubernetes_sd_config for endpoints and endpointslices roles. See https://github.com/VictoriaMetrics/VictoriaMetrics/issues/982

• BUGFIX: do not adjust offset value provided in MetricsQL query. Previously it could be modified in order to improve response cache hit ratio. This is unneeded, since cache hit ratio should remain good because the query time range should be already aligned to multiple of step values. See https://github.com/VictoriaMetrics/VictoriaMetrics/issues/976

v1.50.2#

Released at 2020-12-19

• FEATURE: do not publish duplicate Docker images with -cluster tag suffix for vmagent, vmalert, vmauth, vmbackup and vmrestore, since they are identical to images without -cluster tag suffix.

• BUGFIX: vmalert: properly populate template variables. This has been broken in v1.50.0. See https://github.com/VictoriaMetrics/VictoriaMetrics/issues/974

• BUGFIX: properly parse negative combined duration in MetricsQL such as -1h3m4s. It must be parsed as -(1h + 3m + 4s). Prevsiously it was parsed as -1h + 3m + 4s.

• BUGFIX: properly parse lines in Prometheus exposition format and in OpenMetrics format with whitespace after the timestamp. For example, foo 123 456 ## some comment here. See https://github.com/VictoriaMetrics/VictoriaMetrics/pull/970

v1.50.1#

Released at 2020-12-15

• FEATURE: vmagent: export vmagent_remotewrite_blocks_sent_total and vmagent_remotewrite_blocks_sent_total metrics for each -remoteWrite.url.

• BUGFIX: vmagent: properly delete unregistered scrape targets from /targets and /api/v1/targets pages. They weren’t deleted due to the bug in v1.50.0.

v1.50.0#

Released at 2020-12-15

• FEATURE: automatically reset response cache when samples with timestamps older than now - search.cacheTimestampOffset are ingested to VictoriaMetrics. This makes unnecessary disabling response cache during data backfilling or resetting it after backfilling is complete as described in these docs. This feature applies only to single-node VictoriaMetrics. It doesn’t apply to cluster version of VictoriaMetrics because vminsert nodes don’t know about vmselect nodes where the response cache must be reset.

• FEATURE: vmalert: add query, first and value functions to alert templates. See https://github.com/VictoriaMetrics/VictoriaMetrics/issues/539

• FEATURE: vmagent: return user-friendly HTML page when requesting /targets page from web browser. The page is returned in the old plaintext format when requesting via curl or similar tool.

• FEATURE: allow multiple whitespace chars between measurements, fields and timestamp when parsing InfluxDB line protocol. Though InfluxDB line protocol denies multiple whitespace chars between these entities, some apps improperly put multiple whitespace chars. This workaround allows accepting data from such apps.

• FEATURE: export vm_promscrape_active_scrapers{type="<sd_type>"} metric for tracking the number of active scrapers per each service discovery type.

• FEATURE: export vm_promscrape_scrapers_started_total{type="<sd_type>"} and vm_promscrape_scrapers_stopped_total{type="<sd_type>"} metrics for tracking churn rate for scrapers per each service discovery type.

• FEATURE: vmagent: allow setting per--remoteWrite.url command-line flags for -remoteWrite.sendTimeout and -remoteWrite.tlsInsecureSkipVerify.

• BUGFIX: properly handle * and [...] inside curly braces in query passed to Graphite Metrics API. See https://github.com/VictoriaMetrics/VictoriaMetrics/issues/952

• BUGFIX: vmagent: fix memory leak when big number of targets is discovered via service discovery.

• BUGFIX: vmagent: properly pass datacenter filter to Consul API server. See https://github.com/VictoriaMetrics/VictoriaMetrics/issues/574#issuecomment-740454170

• BUGFIX: properly handle CPU limits set on the host system or host container. The bugfix may result in lower memory usage on systems with CPU limits. See https://github.com/VictoriaMetrics/VictoriaMetrics/issues/946

• BUGFIX: prevent from duplicate name tag returned from /tags/autoComplete/tags handler. See https://github.com/VictoriaMetrics/VictoriaMetrics/issues/942

• BUGFIX: do not enable strict parsing for -promscrape.config if -promscrape.config.dryRun comand-line flag is set. Strict parsing can be enabled with -promscrape.config.strictParse command-line flag. See https://github.com/VictoriaMetrics/VictoriaMetrics/issues/944

• BUGFIX: vminsert: properly update vm_rpc_rerouted_rows_processed_total metric. Previously it wasn’t updated. See https://github.com/VictoriaMetrics/VictoriaMetrics/issues/955

• BUGFIX: vmagent: properly recover when opening incorrectly stored persistent queue. See https://github.com/VictoriaMetrics/VictoriaMetrics/issues/964

• BUGFIX: vmagent: properly handle scrape errors when stream parsing is enabled with -promscrape.streamParse command-line flag or with stream_parse: true per-target config option. Previously such errors weren’t reported at /targets page. See https://github.com/VictoriaMetrics/VictoriaMetrics/issues/967

• BUGFIX: assume the previous value is 0 when calculating increase() for the first point on the graph if its value doesn’t exceed 100 and the delta between two first points equals to 0. See https://github.com/VictoriaMetrics/VictoriaMetrics/issues/962

v1.49.0#

Released at 2020-12-05

• FEATURE: optimize Consul service discovery speed when discovering big number of services. See https://github.com/VictoriaMetrics/VictoriaMetrics/issues/574

• FEATURE: add label_uppercase(q, label1, ... labelN) and label_lowercase(q, label1, ... labelN) function to MetricsQL for uppercasing and lowercasing values for the given labels. See https://github.com/VictoriaMetrics/VictoriaMetrics/issues/936

• FEATURE: add count_eq_over_time(m[d], N) and count_ne_over_time(m[d], N) for counting the number of samples for m over d that (equal / not equal) to N.

• FEATURE: do not print usage info for all the command-line flags when incorrect command-line flag is passed. Previously it could be hard reading the error message about incorrect command-line flag because of too big usage info for all the flags.

• FEATURE: upgrade Go builder from v1.15.5 to v1.15.6 . This fixes issues found in Go since v1.15.5.

• BUGFIX: properly parse timestamps in OpenMetrics format - they are exposed as floating-point number in seconds instead of integer milliseconds unlike in Prometheus exposition format. See the docs.

• BUGFIX: return nan for a >bool b query when a equals to nan like Prometheus does. Previously 0 was returned in this case. This applies to any comparison operation with bool modifier. See these docs for details.

• BUGFIX: properly parse hex numbers in MetricsQL. Previously hex numbers with non-decimal digits such as 0x3b couldn’t be parsed.

• BUGFIX: handle time() cmp_op metric like Prometheus does - i.e. return metric value if cmp_op comparison is true. Previously time() value was returned.

• BUGFIX: return nan for minute(m) query when m equals to nan like Prometheus does. This applies to all the time-related functions such as day_of_month, day_of_week, days_in_month, hour, month and year.

v1.48.0#

Released at 2020-11-26

• FEATURE: added Snap package for single-node VictoriaMetrics. This simplifies installation under Ubuntu to a single command:

  snap install victoriametrics
  

• FEATURE: vmselect: add -replicationFactor command-line flag for reducing query duration when replication is enabled and a part of vmstorage nodes are temporarily slow and/or temporarily unavailable. See https://github.com/VictoriaMetrics/VictoriaMetrics/issues/711

• FEATURE: vminsert: export vm_rpc_vmstorage_is_reachable metric, which can be used for monitoring reachability of vmstorage nodes from vminsert nodes.

• FEATURE: vmagent: add Netflix Eureka service discovery (aka eureka_sd_config). See https://github.com/VictoriaMetrics/VictoriaMetrics/issues/851

• FEATURE: add filters option to dockerswarm_sd_config like Prometheus did in v2.23.0 - see https://github.com/prometheus/prometheus/pull/8074

• FEATURE: expose __meta_ec2_ipv6_addresses label for ec2_sd_config like Prometheus will do in the next release.

• FEATURE: add -loggerWarnsPerSecondLimit command-line flag for rate limiting of WARN messages in logs. See https://github.com/VictoriaMetrics/VictoriaMetrics/issues/905

• FEATURE: apply loggerErrorsPerSecondLimit and -loggerWarnsPerSecondLimit rate limit per caller. I.e. log messages are suppressed if the same caller logs the same message at the rate exceeding the given limit. See https://github.com/VictoriaMetrics/VictoriaMetrics/issues/905#issuecomment-729395855

• FEATURE: add remoteAddr to slow query log in order to simplify identifying the client that sends slow queries to VictoriaMetrics. Slow query logging is controlled with -search.logSlowQueryDuration command-line flag.

• FEATURE: add /tags/delSeries handler from Graphite Tags API. See https://docs.victoriametrics.com/#graphite-tags-api-usage

• FEATURE: log metric name plus all its labels when the metric timestamp is out of the configured retention. This should simplify detecting the source of metrics with unexpected timestamps.

• FEATURE: add -dryRun command-line flag to single-node VictoriaMetrics in order to check config file pointed by -promscrape.config.

• BUGFIX: properly parse Prometheus metrics with exemplars such as foo 123 ## {bar="baz"} 1.

• BUGFIX: properly parse “infinity” values in OpenMetrics format. See https://github.com/VictoriaMetrics/VictoriaMetrics/issues/924

v1.47.0#

Released at 2020-11-16

• FEATURE: vmselect: return the original error from vmstorage node in query response if -search.denyPartialResponse is set. See https://github.com/VictoriaMetrics/VictoriaMetrics/issues/891

• FEATURE: vmselect: add "isPartial":{true|false} field in JSON output for /api/v1/* functions from Prometheus querying API. "isPartial":true is set if the response contains partial data because of a part of vmstorage nodes were unavailable during query processing.

• FEATURE: improve performance for /api/v1/series, /api/v1/labels and /api/v1/label/<labelName>/values on time ranges exceeding one day.

• FEATURE: vmagent: reduce memory usage when service discovery detects big number of scrape targets and the set of discovered targets changes over time. See https://github.com/VictoriaMetrics/VictoriaMetrics/issues/825

• FEATURE: vmagent: add -promscrape.dropOriginalLabels command-line option, which can be used for reducing memory usage when scraping big number of targets. See https://github.com/VictoriaMetrics/VictoriaMetrics/issues/825#issuecomment-724308361 for details.

• FEATURE: vmalert: explicitly set extra labels to alert entities. See https://github.com/VictoriaMetrics/VictoriaMetrics/issues/870

• FEATURE: add -search.treatDotsAsIsInRegexps command-line flag, which can be used for automatic escaping of dots in regexp label filters used in queries. For example, if -search.treatDotsAsIsInRegexps is set, then the query foo{bar=~"aaa.bb.cc|dd.eee"} is automatically converted to foo{bar=~"aaa\\.bb\\.cc|dd\\.eee"}. This may be useful for querying Graphite data.

• FEATURE: consistently return text-based HTTP responses such as plain/text and application/json with charset=utf-8. See https://github.com/VictoriaMetrics/VictoriaMetrics/pull/897

• FEATURE: update Go builder from v1.15.4 to v1.15.5. This should fix these issues in Go.

• FEATURE: added /internal/force_flush http handler for flushing recently ingested data from in-memory buffers to persistent storage. See troubleshooting docs for more details.

• FEATURE: added Graphite Tags API support. See these docs for details.

• BUGFIX: do not return data points in the end of the selected time range for time series ending in the middle of the selected time range. See https://github.com/VictoriaMetrics/VictoriaMetrics/issues/887 and https://github.com/VictoriaMetrics/VictoriaMetrics/issues/845

• BUGFIX: remove spikes at the end of time series gaps for increase() or delta() functions. See https://github.com/VictoriaMetrics/VictoriaMetrics/issues/894

• BUGFIX: vminsert: properly return HTTP 503 status code when all the vmstorage nodes are unavailable. See https://github.com/VictoriaMetrics/VictoriaMetrics/issues/896

v1.46.0#

Released at 2020-11-07

• FEATURE: optimize requests to /api/v1/labels and /api/v1/label/<name>/values when start and end args are set.

• FEATURE: reduce memory usage when query touches big number of time series.

• FEATURE: vmagent: reduce memory usage when kubernetes_sd_config discovers big number of scrape targets (e.g. hundreds of thousands) and the majority of these targets (99%) are dropped during relabeling. Previously labels for all the dropped targets were displayed at /api/v1/targets page. Now only up to -promscrape.maxDroppedTargets such targets are displayed. See https://github.com/VictoriaMetrics/VictoriaMetrics/issues/878 for details.

• FEATURE: vmagent: reduce memory usage when scraping big number of targets with big number of temporary labels starting with __. See https://github.com/VictoriaMetrics/VictoriaMetrics/issues/825

• FEATURE: vmagent: add /ready HTTP endpoint, which returns 200 OK status code when all the service discovery has been initialized. This may be useful during rolling upgrades. See https://github.com/VictoriaMetrics/VictoriaMetrics/issues/875

• BUGFIX: vmagent: eliminate data race when -promscrape.streamParse command-line is set. Previously this mode could result in scraped metrics with garbage labels. See https://github.com/VictoriaMetrics/VictoriaMetrics/issues/825#issuecomment-723198247 for details.

• BUGFIX: properly calculate topk_* and bottomk_* functions from MetricsQL for time series with gaps. See https://github.com/VictoriaMetrics/VictoriaMetrics/pull/883

v1.45.0#

Released at 2020-11-02

• FEATURE: allow setting -retentionPeriod smaller than one month. I.e. -retentionPeriod=3d, -retentionPeriod=2w, etc. is supported now. See https://github.com/VictoriaMetrics/VictoriaMetrics/issues/173

• FEATURE: optimize more cases according to https://utcc.utoronto.ca/~cks/space/blog/sysadmin/PrometheusLabelNonOptimization . Now the following cases are optimized too:

  • rollup_func(foo{filters}[d]) op bar -> rollup_func(foo{filters}[d]) op bar{filters}
  • transform_func(foo{filters}) op bar -> transform_func(foo{filters}) op bar{filters}
  • num_or_scalar op foo{filters} op bar -> num_or_scalar op foo{filters} op bar{filters}

• FEATURE: improve time series search for queries with multiple label filters. I.e. foo{label1="value", label2=~"regexp"}. See https://github.com/VictoriaMetrics/VictoriaMetrics/issues/781

• FEATURE: vmagent: add stream parse mode. This mode allows reducing memory usage when individual scrape targets expose tens of millions of metrics. For example, during scraping Prometheus in federation mode. See -promscrape.streamParse command-line option and stream_parse: true config option for scrape_config section in -promscrape.config. See https://github.com/VictoriaMetrics/VictoriaMetrics/issues/825 and troubleshooting docs for vmagent.

• FEATURE: vmalert: add -dryRun command-line option for validating the provided config files without the need to start vmalert service.

• FEATURE: accept optional third argument of string type at topk_* and bottomk_* functions. This is label name for additional time series to return with the sum of time series outside top/bottom K. See MetricsQL docs for more details.

• FEATURE: vmagent: expose /api/v1/targets page according to the corresponding Prometheus API. See https://github.com/VictoriaMetrics/VictoriaMetrics/issues/643

• BUGFIX: vmagent: properly handle OpenStack endpoint ending with v3.0 such as https://ostack.example.com:5000/v3.0 in the same way as Prometheus does. See https://github.com/VictoriaMetrics/VictoriaMetrics/issues/728#issuecomment-709914803

• BUGFIX: drop trailing data points for time series with a single raw sample. See https://github.com/VictoriaMetrics/VictoriaMetrics/issues/748

• BUGFIX: do not drop trailing data points for instant queries to /api/v1/query. See https://github.com/VictoriaMetrics/VictoriaMetrics/issues/845

• BUGFIX: vmbackup: fix panic when -origin isn’t specified. See https://github.com/VictoriaMetrics/VictoriaMetrics/issues/856

• BUGFIX: vmalert: skip automatically added labels on alerts restore. Label alertgroup was introduced in this issue and automatically added to generated time series. By mistake, this new label wasn’t correctly purged on restore event and affected alert’s ID uniqueness. See https://github.com/VictoriaMetrics/VictoriaMetrics/issues/870

• BUGFIX: vmagent: fix panic at scrape error body formating. See https://github.com/VictoriaMetrics/VictoriaMetrics/issues/864

• BUGFIX: vmagent: add leading missing slash to metrics path like Prometheus does. See https://github.com/VictoriaMetrics/VictoriaMetrics/issues/835

• BUGFIX: vmagent: drop packet if remote storage returns 4xx status code. This make the behaviour consistent with Prometheus. See https://github.com/VictoriaMetrics/VictoriaMetrics/issues/873

• BUGFIX: vmagent: properly handle 301 redirects. See https://github.com/VictoriaMetrics/VictoriaMetrics/issues/869

v1.44.0#

Released at 2020-10-13

• FEATURE: automatically add missing label filters to binary operands as described at https://utcc.utoronto.ca/~cks/space/blog/sysadmin/PrometheusLabelNonOptimization . This should improve performance for queries with missing label filters in binary operands. For example, the following query should work faster now, because it shouldn’t fetch and discard time series for node_filesystem_files_free metric without matching labels for the left side of the expression:

     node_filesystem_files{ host="$host", mountpoint="/" } - node_filesystem_files_free
  

• FEATURE: vmagent: add Docker Swarm service discovery (aka dockerswarm_sd_config). See https://github.com/VictoriaMetrics/VictoriaMetrics/issues/656

• FEATURE: add ability to export data in CSV format. See these docs for details.

• FEATURE: vmagent: add -promscrape.suppressDuplicateScrapeTargetErrors command-line flag for suppressing duplicate scrape target errors. See https://github.com/VictoriaMetrics/VictoriaMetrics/issues/651 and https://docs.victoriametrics.com/vmagent/#troubleshooting .

• FEATURE: vmagent: show original labels before relabeling is applied on duplicate scrape target errors. This should simplify debugging for incorrect relabeling. See https://github.com/VictoriaMetrics/VictoriaMetrics/issues/651

• FEATURE: vmagent: /targets page now accepts optional show_original_labels=1 query arg for displaying original labels for each target before relabeling is applied. This should simplify debugging for target relabeling configs. See https://github.com/VictoriaMetrics/VictoriaMetrics/issues/651

• FEATURE: add -finalMergeDelay command-line flag for configuring the delay before final merge for per-month partitions. The final merge is started after no new data is ingested into per-month partition during -finalMergeDelay.

• FEATURE: add vm_rows_added_to_storage_total metric, which shows the total number of rows added to storage since app start. The sum(rate(vm_rows_added_to_storage_total)) can be smaller than sum(rate(vm_rows_inserted_total)) if certain metrics are dropped due to relabeling. The sum(rate(vm_rows_added_to_storage_total)) can be bigger than sum(rate(vm_rows_inserted_total)) if replication is enabled.

• FEATURE: keep metric name after applying MetricsQL functions, which don’t change time series meaning. The list of such functions:

  • keep_last_value
  • keep_next_value
  • interpolate
  • running_min
  • running_max
  • running_avg
  • range_min
  • range_max
  • range_avg
  • range_first
  • range_last
  • range_quantile
  • smooth_exponential
  • ceil
  • floor
  • round
  • clamp_min
  • clamp_max
  • max_over_time
  • min_over_time
  • avg_over_time
  • quantile_over_time
  • mode_over_time
  • geomean_over_time
  • holt_winters
  • predict_linear See https://github.com/VictoriaMetrics/VictoriaMetrics/issues/674

• BUGFIX: properly handle stale time series after K8S deployment. Previously such time series could be double-counted. See https://github.com/VictoriaMetrics/VictoriaMetrics/issues/748

• BUGFIX: return a single time series at max from absent() function like Prometheus does.

• BUGFIX: vmalert: accept days, weeks and years in for: part of config like Prometheus does. See https://github.com/VictoriaMetrics/VictoriaMetrics/issues/817

• BUGFIX: fix mode_over_time(m[d]) calculations. Previously the function could return incorrect results.

v1.43.0#

Released at 2020-10-06

• FEATURE: reduce CPU usage for repeated queries over sliding time window when no new time series are added to the database. Typical use cases: repeated evaluation of alerting rules in vmalert or dashboard auto-refresh in Grafana.

• FEATURE: vmagent: add OpenStack service discovery aka openstack_sd_config. See https://github.com/VictoriaMetrics/VictoriaMetrics/issues/728 .

• FEATURE: vmalert: make -maxIdleConnections configurable for datasource HTTP client. This option can be used for minimizing connection churn. See https://github.com/VictoriaMetrics/VictoriaMetrics/issues/795 .

• FEATURE: add -influx.maxLineSize command-line flag for configuring the maximum size for a single InfluxDB line during parsing. See https://github.com/VictoriaMetrics/VictoriaMetrics/issues/807

• BUGFIX: properly handle inf values during background merge of LSM parts. Previously Inf values could result in NaN values for adjacent samples in time series. See https://github.com/VictoriaMetrics/VictoriaMetrics/issues/805 .

• BUGFIX: fill gaps on graphs for range_* and running_* functions. See https://github.com/VictoriaMetrics/VictoriaMetrics/issues/806 .

• BUGFIX: make a copy of label with new name during relabeling with action: labelmap in the same way as Prometheus does. Previously the original label name has been replaced. See https://github.com/VictoriaMetrics/VictoriaMetrics/issues/812 .

• BUGFIX: support parsing floating-point timestamp like Graphite Carbon does. Such timestmaps are truncated to seconds.

v1.42.0#

Released at 2020-09-30

• FEATURE: use all the available CPU cores when accepting data via a single TCP connection for all the supported protocols. Previously data ingested via a single TCP connection could use only a single CPU core. This could limit data ingestion performance. The main benefit of this feature is that data can be imported at max speed via a single connection - there is no need to open multiple concurrent connections to VictoriaMetrics or vmagent in order to achieve the maximum data ingestion speed.

• FEATURE: cluster: improve performance for data ingestion path from vminsert to vmstorage nodes. The maximum data ingestion performance for a single connection between vminsert and vmstorage node scales with the number of available CPU cores on vmstorage side. This should help with https://github.com/VictoriaMetrics/VictoriaMetrics/issues/791 .

• FEATURE: add ability to export / import data in native format via /api/v1/export/native and /api/v1/import/native. This is the most optimized approach for data migration between VictoriaMetrics instances. Both single-node and cluster instances are supported. See https://github.com/VictoriaMetrics/VictoriaMetrics/issues/787#issuecomment-700632551 .

• FEATURE: add reduce_mem_usage query option to /api/v1/export in order to reduce memory usage during data export / import. See these docs for details.

• FEATURE: improve performance for /api/v1/series handler when it returns big number of time series.

• FEATURE: add vm_merge_need_free_disk_space metric, which can be used for estimating the number of deferred background data merges due to the lack of free disk space. See https://github.com/VictoriaMetrics/VictoriaMetrics/issues/686 .

• FEATURE: add OpenBSD support. See https://github.com/VictoriaMetrics/VictoriaMetrics/issues/785 .

• BUGFIX: properly apply -search.maxStalenessInterval command-line flag value. See https://github.com/VictoriaMetrics/VictoriaMetrics/issues/784 .

• BUGFIX: fix displaying data in Grafana tables. See https://github.com/VictoriaMetrics/VictoriaMetrics/issues/720 .

• BUGFIX: do not adjust the number of detected CPU cores found at /sys/devices/system/cpu/online. The adjustment was increasing the resulting GOMAXPROC by 1, which looked confusing to users. See https://github.com/VictoriaMetrics/VictoriaMetrics/issues/685#issuecomment-698595309 .

• BUGFIX: vmagent: do not show -remoteWrite.url in initial logs if -remoteWrite.showURL isn’t set. See https://github.com/VictoriaMetrics/VictoriaMetrics/issues/773 .

• BUGFIX: properly handle case when /metrics/find finds both a leaf and a node for the given query=prefix.*. In this case only the node must be returned with stripped dot in the end of id as carbonapi does.

Previous releases#

See releases page.