The Benefits of VictoriaMetrics: BlackSwift's Real-World Experience

Presented by Alexis Ducastel from Blackswift during the virtual VictoriaMetrics Meetup for Q2 2024.

Topics covered:

1. Who are Blackswift and what are Blackswift Kontainers?

2. Monitoring is not an option, it’s included

3. What do we need:
High Availability, Scalability, Multi-tenancy, Easy Management & Great Documentation

1st Competitor : Prometheus
Prometheus - the “all-you-can-eat” model
2nd Competitor : Grafana Mimir
3rd Competitor : VictoriaMetrics

4. Guess who won? VictoriaMetrics

5. Our current architecture

6. Who wants numbers?

7. Let’s talk about money

8. Our conclusion
● Scalability upscale (both vertical and horizontal)
● Incredible resource efficiency (CPU/mem/storage/network)
● Stability with easy maintenance
● Very fast onboarding with outstanding documentation
● Complete tooling kit ( operator, auth, backup, self-monitoring, ...)

Features we are waiting for :
● Auto-rebalancing (when changing number of vmstorage)
● Object storage as backend (easier capacity planning)

1. The benefits of Victoria Metrics,
BlackSwift 's real world experience
Alexis DUCASTEL
June 20th 2024

2. Alexis
DUCASTEL
The benefits of Victoria Metrics,
BlackSwift 's real world experience

Who am I ?

3. GPDR
Compliant Kontainers
The benefits of Victoria Metrics,
BlackSwift 's real world experience

Who is BlackSwift ?
We are a french company that provides a
Container as a Service platform, with features
like multi-provider clusters, access to K8S API,
monitoring, backups and predictable pricing

4. GPDR
Compliant Kontainers
The benefits of Victoria Metrics,
BlackSwift 's real world experience

Who is BlackSwift ?
We are a french company that provides a
Container as a Service platform, with features
like multi-provider clusters, access to K8S API,
monitoring, backups and predictable pricing

5. Happy BlackSwift user
enjoying its metrics
The benefits of Victoria Metrics,
BlackSwift 's real world experience

Monitoring is not an option, it’s included !

6. The benefits of Victoria Metrics,
BlackSwift 's real world experience

Monitoring is not an option, it’s included !
Happy BlackSwift user
enjoying its metrics

7. The benefits of Victoria Metrics,
BlackSwift 's real world experience

What do we need ?
High Availability Scalability
Easy management
(+ documentation)
Multi-tenancy
Our needs :

8. The benefits of Victoria Metrics,
BlackSwift 's real world experience

1st Competitor : Prometheus
High Availability Scalability
Easy management
(+ documentation)
Multi-tenancy

9. The benefits of Victoria Metrics,
BlackSwift 's real world experience

1st Competitor : Prometheus
High Availability Scalability
Easy management
(+ documentation)
Multi-tenancy

10. The benefits of Victoria Metrics,
BlackSwift 's real world experience

Prometheus - the “all-you-can-eat” model
Rare photography of a wild Prometheus dealing with memory

11. The benefits of Victoria Metrics,
BlackSwift 's real world experience

2nd Competitor : Grafana Mimir
High Availability Scalability
Easy management
(+ documentation)
Multi-tenancy

12. The benefits of Victoria Metrics,
BlackSwift 's real world experience

2nd Competitor : Grafana Mimir
High Availability Scalability
Easy management
(+ documentation)
Multi-tenancy

13. The benefits of Victoria Metrics,
BlackSwift 's real world experience

2nd Competitor : Grafana Mimir
High Availability Scalability
Easy management
(+ documentation)
Multi-tenancy

14. The benefits of Victoria Metrics,
BlackSwift 's real world experience

3rd Competitor : Victoria Metrics
High Availability Scalability
Easy management
(+ documentation)
Multi-tenancy

15. The benefits of Victoria Metrics,
BlackSwift 's real world experience

3rd Competitor : Victoria Metrics
High Availability Scalability
Easy management
(+ documentation)
Multi-tenancy

16. The benefits of Victoria Metrics,
BlackSwift 's real world experience

Guess who won ?

17. The benefits of Victoria Metrics,
BlackSwift 's real world experience

Our current architecture :
vmagent

18. The benefits of Victoria Metrics,
BlackSwift 's real world experience

Whoooo wants numbeeeeers ?
~2.2M series
~412Gi storage
0.31 bytes / point
Highlights of our main VMCluster :
~1.5T datapoints
~67k datapoints/s
13 months retention

19. The benefits of Victoria Metrics,
BlackSwift 's real world experience

Let’s talk about money baby
How much would we pay for a SaaS solution ?
225 000 € / year (0.15€ / 1M points ingérés)
(~18 750 € / month)
Grafana Cloud (2.2M metrics) : 17 600 $ / month (8$ / 1k metrics)
Scaleway Cockpit (1.5T datapoints) :

20. The benefits of Victoria Metrics,
BlackSwift 's real world experience

Our conclusion
●Auto-rebalancing (when changing number of vmstorage)
●Object storage as backend (easier capacity planning)
Features we are waiting for :
Victoria Metrics main strengths :
●Scalability upscale (both vertical and horizontal)
●Incredible resource efficiency (CPU/mem/storage/network)
●Stability with easy maintenance
●Very fast onboarding with outstanding documentation
●Complete tooling kit ( operator, auth, backup, self-monitoring, …)

21. The benefits of Victoria Metrics,
BlackSwift 's real world experience

Our conclusion
●Auto-rebalancing (when changing number of vmstorage)
●Object storage as backend (easier capacity planning)
Features we are waiting for :
Victoria Metrics main strengths :
●Scalability upscale (both vertical and horizontal)
●Incredible resource efficiency (CPU/mem/storage/network)
●Stability with easy maintenance
●Very fast onboarding with outstanding documentation
●Complete tooling kit ( operator, auth, backup, self-monitoring, …)
Cluster migrated
with a few minutes of
downtime thanks to
vmbackup

22. Thanks a lot everyone !
The benefits of Victoria Metrics,
BlackSwift 's real world experience

Questions ?

23. The benefits of Victoria Metrics,
BlackSwift 's real world experience
Alexis DUCASTEL
June 20th 2024