Prometheus: Add support for graphing multiple unrelated timeseries (metrics) in one graph

[juliusv]

It should be possible to correlate multiple metrics in the same graph. The graphing UI should show (dynamically) multiple expression input fields to enable that.

[brian-brazil]

The console templates graph library supports this, we'd have to hook it into /graph though.

[syepes]

+1

[smalot]

+1

[fmmr]

+1

[prasadus92]

+1

[alexellis]

~3 years on are we any closer to this happening? @brian-brazil

[juliusv]

@alexellis No, nobody has spent time on this yet as far as I know.

[mindfulmonk]

What about this query? It seems to work.

{__name__=~"node_filefd_allocated|node_filefd_maximum"}

[juliusv]

@mindfulmonk That works, but has the downside of giving you back all data in one expression, and especially if you apply any transformation that will drop the metric name (rate, increase, sum, avg, etc.), then you won't know anymore what is what.

[tomwilkie]

@davkal added a hack to the Cortex UI to allow multiple queries separated
by semicolons. @juliusv do you think that might work here?
On Wed, 31 May 2017 at 15:50, Julius Volz [e-mail] wrote:

@mindfulmonk https://github.com/mindfulmonk That works, but has the
downside of giving you back all data in one expression, and especially if
you apply any transformation that will drop the metric name (rate,
increase, sum, avg, etc.), then you won't know anymore what is what.

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[juliusv]

That really seems hacky to me (and could theoretically even conflict with future language changes). If we decide to do this in Prometheus itself at all, I'd prefer a full UI solution to this that allows you to add multiple input fields - either underneath each other or tabbed (like in OpenTSDB).

[G-Harmon]

+1 to this request

[davkal]

This is supported by Grafana's Explore, which is now available in grafana/grafana:latest as part of the Beta for the upcoming 6.0 release (and no longer behind a feature flag).

[codesome]

I was digging through issues for possible GSoC projects, so are we still keen on adding this into Prometheus?
/cc @juliusv

[juliusv]

I think yes, but it's probably not large enough for a GSoC project. Maybe a day or so...

[beorn7]

At this point, we should only consider this for the new ReactUI.

[cben]

There are two separate reasons this would be nice:

1. It's usually convenient to share horizontal axis — shifting/zooming time range in sync between all plots.

2. Overlaying different data on same plot and same vertical scale is sometimes desirable, sometimes confusing.

(1) is just UX convenience, you can simulate it now by copying same end time and range to all plots. But maybe it'd be acceptable to make this always the case — show the time range widgets only once for whole page — since when you want separate time scales you can always use multiple browser tabs?

For (2) there are several possible UI models:

• Hierarchical: a page is array of panels [Add panel] / [Remove panel]; each panel has array of expressions [Add expression] / [Remove expression].
• Flat: a page is array of expressions; between expressions have a checkbox [⭥Combine plots], rendering consecutive combined chunks into one plot. This may be weirder but I think it can be convenient to toggle between split and overlaid views.
  
  
  
  • Out of scope: An extreme variant of "flat" is to turn all expression entry boxes into a single editor, with plots popping between editor lines (e.g. CodeMirror can do it). Even weirder for new users :exploding_head:, but would give power to re-arrange many plots by copy-paste...