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Prometheus

Backend

Using the prometheus backend class, you can query any metrics available in Prometheus to create an SLO.

backends:
  prometheus:
    url: http://localhost:9090
    # headers:
    #   Content-Type: application/json
    #   Authorization: Basic b2s6cGFzcW==

Optional fields:

  • headers allows to specify Basic Authentication credentials if needed.

The following methods are available to compute SLOs with the prometheus backend:

  • good_bad_ratio for computing good / bad metrics ratios.
  • query_sli for computing SLIs directly with Prometheus.

Good / bad ratio

The good_bad_ratio method is used to compute the ratio between two metrics:

  • Good events, i.e events we consider as 'good' from the user perspective.
  • Bad or valid events, i.e events we consider either as 'bad' from the user perspective, or all events we consider as 'valid' for the computation of the SLO.

This method is often used for availability SLOs, but can be used for other purposes as well (see examples).

Config example:

backend: prometheus
method: good_bad_ratio
service_level_indicator:
  filter_good: http_requests_total{handler="/metrics", code=~"2.."}[window]
  filter_valid: http_requests_total{handler="/metrics"}[window]
  # operators: ['sum', 'rate']

  • The window placeholder is needed in the query and will be replaced by the corresponding window field set in each step of the Error Budget Policy.

  • The operators section defines which PromQL functions to apply on the timeseries. The default is to compute sum(increase([METRIC_NAME][window])) to get an accurate count of good and bad events. Be aware that changing will likely result in good / bad counts that do not accurately reflect actual load.

→ Full SLO config

Query SLI

The query_sli method is used to directly query the needed SLI with Prometheus: indeed, Prometheus' PromQL language is powerful enough that it can do ratios natively.

This method makes it more flexible to input any PromQL SLI computation and eventually reduces the number of queries made to Prometheus.

See Bitnami's article on engineering SLOs with Prometheus.

Config example:

backend: prometheus
method: query_sli
service_level_indicator:
  expression:  >
    sum(rate(http_requests_total{handler="/metrics", code=~"2.."}[window]))
    /
    sum(rate(http_requests_total{handler="/metrics"}[window]))
  • The window placeholder is needed in the query and will be replaced by the corresponding window field set in each step of the Error Budget Policy.

→ Full SLO config (availability)

→ Full SLO config (latency)

Distribution cut

The distribution_cut method is used for Prometheus distribution-type metrics (histograms), which are usually used for latency metrics.

A distribution metric records the statistical distribution of the extracted values in histogram buckets. The extracted values are not recorded individually, but their distribution across the configured buckets are recorded. Prometheus creates 3 separate metrics <metric>_count, <metric>_bucket, and <metric>_sum metrics.

When computing SLOs on histograms, we're usually interested in taking the ratio of the number of events that are located in particular buckets (considered 'good', e.g: all requests in the le=0.25 bucket) over the total count of valid events.

The resulting PromQL expression would be similar to:

increase(
  <metric>_bucket{le="0.25"}[window]
)
 / ignoring (le)
increase(
  <metric>_count[window]
)

which you can very well use directly with the method query_sli.

The distribution_cut method does this calculus under the hood - while additionally gathering exact good / bad counts - and proposes a simpler way of expressing it, as shown in the config example below.

Config example:

backend: prometheus
method: distribution_cut
service_level_indicator:
  expression: http_requests_duration_bucket{path='/', code=~"2.."}
  threshold_bucket: 0.25 # corresponds to 'le' attribute in Prometheus histograms

→ Full SLO config

The threshold_bucket allowed will depend on how the buckets boundaries are set for your metric. Learn more in the Prometheus docs.

Exporter

The prometheus exporter allows to export SLO metrics to the Prometheus Pushgateway which needs to be running.

exporters:
  prometheus:
    url: ${PUSHGATEWAY_URL}

Optional fields:

  • metrics: List of metrics to export (see docs). Defaults to [error_budget_burn_rate, sli_service_level_indicator].
  • username: Username for Basic Auth.
  • password: Password for Basic Auth.
  • job: Name of Pushgateway job. Defaults to slo-generator.

Note: prometheus needs to be setup to scrape metrics from Pushgateway (see documentation for more details).

→ Full SLO config

Self Exporter (API mode)

When running slo-generator as an API, you can enable prometheus_self exporter, which will expose all metrics on a standard /metrics endpoint, instead of pushing them to a gateway.

exporters:
  prometheus_self: { }

Note: The metrics endpoint will be available after a first successful SLO request. Before that, it's going to act as if it was endpoint of the generator API.

Examples

Complete SLO samples using prometheus are available in samples/prometheus. Check them out!