VictoriaMetrics supports metrics ingestion with OpenTelemetry metrics format. This guide covers data ingestion via opentelemetry-collector and direct metrics push from application.
Pre-Requirements #
Install VictoriaMetrics single-server via helm chart #
Install single-server version:
helm repo add vm https://victoriametrics.github.io/helm-charts/
helm repo update
helm install victoria-metrics vm/victoria-metrics-single
Verify it’s up and running:
kubectl get pods
# victoria-metrics-victoria-metrics-single-server-0 1/1 Running 0 3m1s
Helm chart provides the following urls for reading and writing data:
Write url inside the kubernetes cluster:
http://victoria-metrics-victoria-metrics-single-server.default.svc.cluster.local:8428
Read Data:
The following url can be used as the datasource url in Grafana:
http://victoria-metrics-victoria-metrics-single-server.default.svc.cluster.local:8428
Using opentelemetry-collector with VictoriaMetrics #
Deploy opentelemetry-collector and configure metrics forwarding #
helm repo add open-telemetry https://open-telemetry.github.io/opentelemetry-helm-charts
helm repo update
# add values
cat << EOF > values.yaml
mode: deployment
image:
repository: "otel/opentelemetry-collector-contrib"
presets:
clusterMetrics:
enabled: true
config:
receivers:
otlp:
protocols:
grpc:
endpoint: 0.0.0.0:4317
http:
endpoint: 0.0.0.0:4318
exporters:
otlphttp/victoriametrics:
compression: gzip
encoding: proto
# Setting below will work for sending data to VictoriaMetrics single-node version.
# Cluster version of VictoriaMetrics will require a different URL - https://docs.victoriametrics.com/cluster-victoriametrics/#url-format
endpoint: http://victoria-metrics-victoria-metrics-single-server.default.svc.cluster.local:8428/opentelemetry
tls:
insecure: true
service:
pipelines:
metrics:
receivers: [otlp]
processors: []
exporters: [otlphttp/victoriametrics]
EOF
# install helm chart
helm upgrade -i otl-collector open-telemetry/opentelemetry-collector -f values.yaml
# check if pod is healthy
kubectl get pod
NAME READY STATUS RESTARTS AGE
otl-collector-opentelemetry-collector-7467bbb559-2pq2n 1/1 Running 0 23m
# forward port to local machine to verify metrics are ingested
kubectl port-forward service/victoria-metrics-victoria-metrics-single-server 8428
# check metric `k8s_container_ready` via browser http://localhost:8428/vmui/#/?g0.expr=k8s_container_ready
# forward port to local machine to setup opentelemetry-collector locally
kubectl port-forward otl-collector-opentelemetry-collector 4318
The full version of possible configuration options could be found in OpenTelemetry docs.
Sending to VictoriaMetrics via OpenTelemetry #
Metrics could be sent to VictoriaMetrics via OpenTelemetry instrumentation libraries. You can use any compatible OpenTelemetry instrumentation clients. In our example, we’ll create a WEB server in Golang and instrument it with metrics.
Building the Go application instrumented with metrics #
Copy the go file from here. This will give you a basic implementation of a dice roll WEB server with the urls for opentelemetry-collector pointing to localhost:4318.
In the same directory run the following command to create the go.mod
file:
go mod init vm/otel
For demo purposes, we’ll add the following dependencies to go.mod
file:
require (
go.opentelemetry.io/contrib/instrumentation/net/http/otelhttp v0.52.0
go.opentelemetry.io/otel v1.27.0
go.opentelemetry.io/otel/exporters/otlp/otlpmetric/otlpmetrichttp v1.27.0
go.opentelemetry.io/otel/exporters/otlp/otlptrace/otlptracehttp v1.27.0
go.opentelemetry.io/otel/metric v1.27.0
go.opentelemetry.io/otel/sdk v1.27.0
go.opentelemetry.io/otel/sdk/metric v1.27.0
)
require (
github.com/cenkalti/backoff/v4 v4.3.0 // indirect
github.com/felixge/httpsnoop v1.0.4 // indirect
github.com/go-logr/logr v1.4.1 // indirectdice.rolls
github.com/go-logr/stdr v1.2.2 // indirect
github.com/grpc-ecosystem/grpc-gateway/v2 v2.20.0 // indirect
go.opentelemetry.io/otel/exporters/otlp/otlptrace v1.27.0 // indirect
go.opentelemetry.io/otel/trace v1.27.0 // indirect
go.opentelemetry.io/proto/otlp v1.2.0 // indirect
golang.org/x/net v0.25.0 // indirect
golang.org/x/sys v0.20.0 // indirect
golang.org/x/text v0.15.0 // indirect
google.golang.org/genproto/googleapis/api v0.0.0-20240520151616-dc85e6b867a5 // indirect
google.golang.org/genproto/googleapis/rpc v0.0.0-20240515191416-fc5f0ca64291 // indirect
google.golang.org/grpc v1.64.0 // indirect
google.golang.org/protobuf v1.34.1 // indirect
)
Once you have these in your go.mod
file, you can run the following command to download the dependencies:
go mod tidy
Now you can run the application:
go run .
Test metrics ingestion #
By default, the application will be available at localhost:8080
. You can start sending requests to /rolldice endpoint to generate metrics. The following command will send 20 requests to the /rolldice endpoint:
for i in `seq 1 20`; do curl http://localhost:8080/rolldice; done
After a few seconds you should start to see metrics sent over to the vmui interface by visiting http://localhost:8428/vmui/#/?g0.expr=dice.rolls
in your browser or by querying the metric dice.rolls
in the vmui interface.
Direct metrics push #
Metrics could be ingested into VictoriaMetrics directly with HTTP requests. You can use any compatible OpenTelemetry instrumentation clients. In our example, we’ll create a WEB server in Golang and instrument it with metrics.
Building the Go application instrumented with metrics #
See the full source code of the example here.
The list of OpenTelemetry dependencies for go.mod
is the following:
go 1.20
require (
go.opentelemetry.io/otel v1.7.0
go.opentelemetry.io/otel/exporters/otlp/otlpmetric v0.30.0
go.opentelemetry.io/otel/exporters/otlp/otlpmetric/otlpmetrichttp v0.30.0
go.opentelemetry.io/otel/metric v0.30.0
go.opentelemetry.io/otel/sdk v1.7.0
go.opentelemetry.io/otel/sdk/metric v0.30.0
)
Let’s create a new file main.go
with basic implementation of the WEB server:
package main
func main() {
mux := http.NewServeMux()
mux.HandleFunc("/api/fast", func(writer http.ResponseWriter, request *http.Request) {
writer.WriteHeader(http.StatusOK)
writer.Write([]byte(`fast ok`))
})
mux.HandleFunc("/api/slow", func(writer http.ResponseWriter, request *http.Request) {
time.Sleep(time.Second * 2)
writer.WriteHeader(http.StatusOK)
writer.Write([]byte(`slow ok`))
})
mw, err := newMetricsMiddleware(mux)
if err != nil {
panic(fmt.Sprintf("cannot build metricMiddleWare: %q", err))
}
go func() {
http.ListenAndServe("localhost:8081", mw)
}()
}
In the code above, we used newMetricsMiddleware
function to create a handler
for our server.
Let’s define it below:
type metricMiddleWare struct {
h http.Handler
requestsCount syncint64.Counter
requestsLatency syncfloat64.Histogram
activeRequests int64
}
func newMetricsMiddleware(h http.Handler) (*metricMiddleWare, error) {
mw := &metricMiddleWare{h: h}
mc, err := newMetricsController(ctx)
if err != nil {
return nil, fmt.Errorf("cannot build metrics collector: %w", err)
}
global.SetMeterProvider(mc)
prov := mc.Meter("")
mw.requestsLatency, err = prov.SyncFloat64().Histogram("http_request_latency_seconds")
if err != nil {
return nil, fmt.Errorf("cannot create histogram: %w", err)
}
mw.requestsCount, err = prov.SyncInt64().Counter("http_requests_total")
if err != nil {
return nil, fmt.Errorf("cannot create syncInt64 counter: %w", err)
}
ar, err := prov.AsyncInt64().Gauge("http_active_requests")
if err != nil {
return nil, fmt.Errorf("cannot create AsyncInt64 gauge: %w", err)
}
if err := prov.RegisterCallback([]instrument.Asynchronous{ar}, func(ctx context.Context) {
ar.Observe(ctx, atomic.LoadInt64(&mw.activeRequests))
}); err != nil {
return nil, fmt.Errorf("cannot Register int64 gauge: %w", err)
}
return mw, nil
}
The new type metricMiddleWare
is instrumented with 3 metrics
initialized in newMetricsMiddleware
method:
- counter
http_requests_total
- histogram
http_request_latency_seconds
- gauge
http_active_requests
Let’s implement http.Handler interface for metricMiddleWare
by adding ServeHTTP
method:
func (m *metricMiddleWare) ServeHTTP(w http.ResponseWriter, r *http.Request) {
t := time.Now()
path := r.URL.Path
m.requestsCount.Add(nil, 1, attribute.String("path", path))
atomic.AddInt64(&m.activeRequests, 1)
defer func() {
atomic.AddInt64(&m.activeRequests, -1)
m.requestsLatency.Record(nil, time.Since(t).Seconds(), attribute.String("path", path))
}()
m.h.ServeHTTP(w, r)
}
In method above, our middleware processes received HTTP requests and updates metrics with each new request.
But for these metrics to be shipped we need to add a new method newMetricsController
to organize metrics collection:
func newMetricsController(ctx context.Context) (*controller.Controller, error) {
options := []otlpmetrichttp.Option{
otlpmetrichttp.WithEndpoint("<VictoriaMetrics endpoint - host:port>"),
otlpmetrichttp.WithURLPath("/opentelemetry/api/v1/push"),
}
metricExporter, err := otlpmetrichttp.New(ctx, options...)
if err != nil {
return nil, fmt.Errorf("cannot create otlphttp exporter: %w", err)
}
resourceConfig, err := resource.New(ctx, resource.WithAttributes(attribute.String("job", "otlp"), attribute.String("instance", "localhost")))
if err != nil {
return nil, fmt.Errorf("cannot create meter resource: %w", err)
}
meterController := controller.New(
processor.NewFactory(
selector.NewWithHistogramDistribution(
histogram.WithExplicitBoundaries([]float64{0.01, 0.05, 0.1, 0.5, 0.9, 1.0, 5.0, 10.0, 100.0}),
),
aggregation.CumulativeTemporalitySelector(),
processor.WithMemory(true),
),
controller.WithExporter(metricExporter),
controller.WithCollectPeriod(time.Second * 10),
controller.WithResource(resourceConfig),
)
if err := meterController.Start(ctx); err != nil {
return nil, fmt.Errorf("cannot start meter controller: %w", err)
}
return meterController, nil
}
This controller will collect and push collected metrics to VictoriaMetrics address with interval of 10s
.
See the full source code of the example here.
Test metrics ingestion #
In order to push metrics of our WEB server to VictoriaMetrics it is necessary to ensure that VictoriaMetrics ingestion endpoint is available locally. In previous steps we already deployed a single-server VictoriaMetrics, so let’s make it available locally:
# port-forward victoriametrics to ingest metrics
kubectl port-forward victoria-metrics-victoria-metrics-single-server-0 8428
Now let’s run our WEB server and call its APIs:
# build and run the app
go run main.go
2024/03/25 19:27:41 Starting web server...
2024/03/25 19:27:41 web server started at localhost:8081.
# execute few queries with curl
curl http://localhost:8081/api/fast
curl http://localhost:8081/api/slow
Open vmui and query http_requests_total
or http_active_requests
with metricsql.