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# FAQ
### What is the main purpose of VictoriaMetrics?
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To provide the best monitoring solution.
### Who uses VictoriaMetrics?
See [case studies](https://github.com/VictoriaMetrics/VictoriaMetrics/wiki/CaseStudies).
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### Which features does VictoriaMetrics have?
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See [these docs](https://github.com/VictoriaMetrics/VictoriaMetrics/blob/master/README.md#prominent-features).
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### How to start using VictoriaMetrics?
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See [these docs](https://github.com/VictoriaMetrics/VictoriaMetrics/wiki/Quick-Start).
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### Is it safe to enable [remote write](https://prometheus.io/docs/operating/integrations/#remote-endpoints-and-storage) in Prometheus?
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Yes. Prometheus continues writing data to local storage after enabling remote write, so all the existing local storage data
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and new data is available for querying via Prometheus as usual.
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It is recommended using [vmagent](https://github.com/VictoriaMetrics/VictoriaMetrics/blob/master/app/vmagent/README.md) for scraping Prometheus targets
and writing data to VictoriaMetrics.
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### How does VictoriaMetrics compare to other remote storage solutions for Prometheus such as [M3 from Uber](https://eng.uber.com/m3/), [Thanos](https://github.com/thanos-io/thanos), [Cortex](https://github.com/cortexproject/cortex), etc.?
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VictoriaMetrics is simpler, faster, more cost-effective and it provides [MetricsQL query language](MetricsQL) based on PromQL. The simplicity is twofold:
- It is simpler to configure and operate. There is no need in configuring [sidecars](https://github.com/thanos-io/thanos/blob/master/docs/components/sidecar.md),
fighting [gossip protocol](https://github.com/improbable-eng/thanos/blob/030bc345c12c446962225221795f4973848caab5/docs/proposals/completed/201809_gossip-removal.md)
or setting up third-party systems such as [Consul](https://github.com/cortexproject/cortex/issues/157), [Cassandra](https://cortexmetrics.io/docs/production/cassandra/),
[DynamoDB](https://cortexmetrics.io/docs/production/aws/) or [Memcached](https://cortexmetrics.io/docs/production/caching/).
- VictoriaMetrics has simpler architecture. This means less bugs and more useful features in the long run comparing to competing TSDBs.
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See [comparing Thanos to VictoriaMetrics cluster](https://medium.com/@valyala/comparing-thanos-to-victoriametrics-cluster-b193bea1683)
and [Remote Write Storage Wars](https://promcon.io/2019-munich/talks/remote-write-storage-wars/) talk from [PromCon 2019](https://promcon.io/2019-munich/talks/remote-write-storage-wars/).
VictoriaMetrics also [uses less RAM than Thanos components](https://github.com/thanos-io/thanos/issues/448).
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### What is the difference between VictoriaMetrics and [Cortex](https://github.com/cortexproject/cortex)?
VictoriaMetrics is similar to Cortex in the following aspects:
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- Both systems accept data from [vmagent](https://github.com/VictoriaMetrics/VictoriaMetrics/blob/master/app/vmagent/README.md) or Prometheus
via standard [remote_write API](https://prometheus.io/docs/practices/remote_write/), i.e. there is no need in running sidecars
unlike in [Thanos](https://github.com/thanos-io/thanos) case.
- Both systems support multi-tenancy out of the box. See [the corresponding docs for VictoriaMetrics](https://github.com/VictoriaMetrics/VictoriaMetrics/blob/cluster/README.md#multitenancy).
- Both systems support data replication. See [replication in Cortex](https://github.com/cortexproject/cortex/blob/fe56f1420099aa1bf1ce09316c186e05bddee879/docs/architecture.md#hashing) and [replication in VictoriaMetrics](https://github.com/VictoriaMetrics/VictoriaMetrics/blob/cluster/README.md#replication-and-data-safety).
- Both systems scale horizontally to multiple nodes. See [these docs](https://github.com/VictoriaMetrics/VictoriaMetrics/blob/cluster/README.md#cluster-resizing-and-scalability) for details.
- Both systems support alerting and recording rules via the corresponding tools such as [vmalert](https://github.com/VictoriaMetrics/VictoriaMetrics/blob/master/app/vmalert/README.md).
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The main differences between Cortex and VictoriaMetrics:
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- Cortex re-uses Prometheus source code, while VictoriaMetrics is written from scratch.
- Cortex heavily relies on third-party services such as Consul, Memcache, DynamoDB, BigTable, Cassandra, etc.
This may increase operational complexity and reduce system reliability comparing to VictoriaMetrics' case,
which doesn't use any external services. Compare [Cortex Architecture](https://github.com/cortexproject/cortex/blob/master/docs/architecture.md)
to [VictoriaMetrics architecture](https://github.com/VictoriaMetrics/VictoriaMetrics/blob/cluster/README.md#architecture-overview).
- VictoriaMetrics provides [production-ready single-node solution](https://github.com/VictoriaMetrics/VictoriaMetrics/blob/master/README.md),
which is much easier to setup and operate than Cortex cluster.
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- Cortex may lose up to 12 hours of recent data on Ingestor failure - see [the corresponding docs](https://github.com/cortexproject/cortex/blob/fe56f1420099aa1bf1ce09316c186e05bddee879/docs/architecture.md#ingesters-failure-and-data-loss).
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VictoriaMetrics may lose only a few seconds of recent data, which isn't synced to persistent storage yet.
See [this article for details](https://medium.com/@valyala/wal-usage-looks-broken-in-modern-time-series-databases-b62a627ab704).
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- Cortex is usually slower and requires more CPU and RAM than VictoriaMetrics. See [this talk from Adidas at PromCon 2019](https://promcon.io/2019-munich/talks/remote-write-storage-wars/) and [other case studies](https://github.com/VictoriaMetrics/VictoriaMetrics/wiki/CaseStudies).
- VictoriaMetrics accepts data in multiple popular data ingestion protocols additionally to Prometheus remote_write protocol - InfluxDB, OpenTSDB, Graphite, CSV.
See [these docs](https://github.com/VictoriaMetrics/VictoriaMetrics/blob/master/README.md#how-to-import-time-series-data) for details.
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### What is the difference between VictoriaMetrics and [Thanos](https://github.com/thanos-io/thanos)?
- Thanos re-uses Prometheus source code, while VictoriaMetrics is written from scratch.
- VictoriaMetrics accepts data via [standard remote_write API for Prometheus](https://prometheus.io/docs/practices/remote_write/),
while Thanos uses non-standard [Sidecar](https://github.com/thanos-io/thanos/blob/master/docs/components/sidecar.md), which must run alongside each Prometheus instance.
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- Thanos Sidecar requires disabling data compaction in Prometheus, which may hurt Prometheus performance and increase RAM usage. See [these docs](https://thanos.io/components/sidecar.md/) for more details.
- Thanos stores data in object storage (Amazon S3 or Google GCS), while VictoriaMetrics stores data in block storage
([GCP persistent disks](https://cloud.google.com/compute/docs/disks#pdspecs), Amazon EBS or bare metal HDD).
While object storage is usually less expensive, block storage provides much lower latencies and higher throughput.
VictoriaMetrics works perfectly with HDD-based block storage - there is no need in using more expensive SSD or NVMe disks in most cases.
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- Thanos may lose up to 2 hours of recent data, which wasn't uploaded yet to object storage. VictoriaMetrics may lose only a few seconds of recent data,
which isn't synced to persistent storage yet. See [this article for details](https://medium.com/@valyala/wal-usage-looks-broken-in-modern-time-series-databases-b62a627ab704).
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- VictoriaMetrics provides [production-ready single-node solution](https://github.com/VictoriaMetrics/VictoriaMetrics/blob/master/README.md),
which is much easier to setup and operate than Thanos components.
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- Thanos may be harder to setup and operate comparing to VictoriaMetrics, since it has more moving parts, which can be connected with less reliable networks.
See [this article for details](https://medium.com/faun/comparing-thanos-to-victoriametrics-cluster-b193bea1683).
- Thanos is usually slower and requires more CPU and RAM than VictoriaMetrics. See [this talk from Adidas at PromCon 2019](https://promcon.io/2019-munich/talks/remote-write-storage-wars/).
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- VictoriaMetrics accepts data in multiple popular data ingestion protocols additionally to Prometheus remote_write protocol - InfluxDB, OpenTSDB, Graphite, CSV.
See [these docs](https://github.com/VictoriaMetrics/VictoriaMetrics/blob/master/README.md#how-to-import-time-series-data) for details.
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### How does VictoriaMetrics compare to [InfluxDB](https://www.influxdata.com/time-series-platform/influxdb/)?
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- VictoriaMetrics requires [10x less RAM](https://medium.com/@valyala/insert-benchmarks-with-inch-influxdb-vs-victoriametrics-e31a41ae2893) and it [works faster](https://medium.com/@valyala/measuring-vertical-scalability-for-time-series-databases-in-google-cloud-92550d78d8ae).
- VictoriaMetrics provides [better query language](https://medium.com/@valyala/promql-tutorial-for-beginners-9ab455142085) than InfluxQL or Flux.
- VictoriaMetrics accepts data in multiple popular data ingestion protocols additionally to InfluxDB - Prometheus remote_write, OpenTSDB, Graphite, CSV.
See [these docs](https://github.com/VictoriaMetrics/VictoriaMetrics/blob/master/README.md#how-to-import-time-series-data) for details.
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### How does VictoriaMetrics compare to [TimescaleDB](https://www.timescale.com/)?
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- TimescaleDB insists on using SQL as a query language. While SQL is more powerful than PromQL, this power is rarely required during typical TSDB usage. Real-world queries usually [look clearer and simpler when written in PromQL than in SQL](https://medium.com/@valyala/promql-tutorial-for-beginners-9ab455142085).
- VictoriaMetrics requires [up to 70x less storage space comparing to TimescaleDB](https://medium.com/@valyala/when-size-matters-benchmarking-victoriametrics-vs-timescale-and-influxdb-6035811952d4) for storing the same amount of time series data. The gap in storage space usage can be lowered from 70x to 3x if [compression in TimescaleDB is properly configured](https://docs.timescale.com/latest/using-timescaledb/compression) (it isn't an easy task in general case :)).
- VictoriaMetrics accepts data in multiple popular data ingestion protocols - InfluxDB, OpenTSDB, Graphite, CSV, while TimescaleDB supports only SQL inserts.
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### Does VictoriaMetrics use Prometheus technologies like other clustered TSDBs built on top of Prometheus such as [Thanos](https://github.com/thanos-io/thanos) or [Cortex](https://github.com/cortexproject/cortex)?
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No. VictoriaMetrics core is written in Go from scratch by [fasthttp](https://github.com/valyala/fasthttp) [author](https://github.com/valyala).
The architecture is [optimized for storing and querying large amounts of time series data with high cardinality](https://medium.com/devopslinks/victoriametrics-creating-the-best-remote-storage-for-prometheus-5d92d66787ac). VictoriaMetrics storage uses [certain ideas from ClickHouse](https://medium.com/@valyala/how-victoriametrics-makes-instant-snapshots-for-multi-terabyte-time-series-data-e1f3fb0e0282). Special thanks to [Alexey Milovidov](https://github.com/alexey-milovidov).
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### Are there performance comparisons with other solutions?
Yes:
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* [Benchmarking time series workloads on Apache Kudu using TSBS](https://blog.cloudera.com/benchmarking-time-series-workloads-on-apache-kudu-using-tsbs/)
* [Billy: how VictoriaMetrics deals with more than 500 billion rows](https://medium.com/@valyala/billy-how-victoriametrics-deals-with-more-than-500-billion-rows-e82ff8f725da)
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* [Measuring vertical scalability for time series databases: VictoriaMetrics vs InfluxDB vs TimescaleDB](https://medium.com/@valyala/measuring-vertical-scalability-for-time-series-databases-in-google-cloud-92550d78d8ae).
* [Measuring insert performance on high-cardinality time series: VictoriaMetrics vs InfluxDB](https://medium.com/@valyala/insert-benchmarks-with-inch-influxdb-vs-victoriametrics-e31a41ae2893)
* [TSBS benchmark on high-cardinality time series: VictoriaMetrics vs InfluxDB vs TimescaleDB](https://medium.com/@valyala/high-cardinality-tsdb-benchmarks-victoriametrics-vs-timescaledb-vs-influxdb-13e6ee64dd6b)
* [Standard TSBS benchmark: VictoriaMetrics vs InfluxDB vs TimescaleDB](https://medium.com/@valyala/when-size-matters-benchmarking-victoriametrics-vs-timescale-and-influxdb-6035811952d4)
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See also [other articles about VictoriaMetrics](https://github.com/VictoriaMetrics/VictoriaMetrics/wiki/Articles).
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### What is the pricing for VictoriaMetrics?
The following versions are open source and free:
* [Single-node version](https://github.com/VictoriaMetrics/VictoriaMetrics/wiki/Single-server-VictoriaMetrics).
* [Cluster version](https://github.com/VictoriaMetrics/VictoriaMetrics/tree/cluster).
We provide commercial support for both versions. [Contact us](mailto:info@victoriametrics.com) for the pricing.
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The following commercial versions of VictoriaMetrics are planned:
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* Managed cluster in the Cloud.
* SaaS version.
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[Contact us](mailto:info@victoriametrics.com) for more information on our plans.
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### Why VictoriaMetrics doesn't support [Prometheus remote read API](https://prometheus.io/docs/prometheus/latest/configuration/configuration/#%3Cremote_read%3E)?
Remote read API requires transferring all the raw data for all the requested metrics over the given time range. For instance,
if a query covers 1000 metrics with 10K values each, then the remote read API had to return `1000*10K`=10M metric values to Prometheus.
This is slow and expensive.
Prometheus remote read API isn't intended for querying foreign data aka `global query view`. See [this issue](https://github.com/prometheus/prometheus/issues/4456) for details.
So just query VictoriaMetrics directly via [Prometheus Querying API](https://prometheus.io/docs/prometheus/latest/querying/api/)
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or via [Prometheus datasource in Grafana](http://docs.grafana.org/features/datasources/prometheus/).
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### Does VictoriaMetrics deduplicate data from Prometheus instances scraping the same targets (aka `HA pairs`)?
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Yes. See [these docs](https://github.com/VictoriaMetrics/VictoriaMetrics/blob/master/README.md#deduplication) for details.
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### Does VictoriaMetrics support replication?
Yes. See [these docs](https://github.com/VictoriaMetrics/VictoriaMetrics/blob/cluster/README.md#replication-and-data-safety) for details.
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### Where is the source code of VictoriaMetrics?
Source code for the following versions is available in the following places:
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* [Single-node version](https://github.com/VictoriaMetrics/VictoriaMetrics)
* [Cluster version](https://github.com/VictoriaMetrics/VictoriaMetrics/tree/cluster)
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### Does VictoriaMetrics fit for data from IoT sensors and industrial sensors?
VictoriaMetrics is able to handle data from hundreds of millions of IoT sensors and industrial sensors.
It supports [high cardinality data](https://medium.com/@valyala/high-cardinality-tsdb-benchmarks-victoriametrics-vs-timescaledb-vs-influxdb-13e6ee64dd6b),
perfectly [scales up on a single node](https://medium.com/@valyala/measuring-vertical-scalability-for-time-series-databases-in-google-cloud-92550d78d8ae)
and scales horizontally to multiple nodes.
### Where can I ask questions about VictoriaMetrics?
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Questions about VictoriaMetrics can be asked via the following channels:
- [Slack channel](http://slack.victoriametrics.com/)
- [Telegram channel](https://t.me/VictoriaMetrics_en)
- [Google group](https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/victorametrics-users)
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### Where can I file bugs and feature requests regarding VictoriaMetrics?
File bugs and feature requests [here](https://github.com/VictoriaMetrics/VictoriaMetrics/issues).
### Are you looking for investors?
Yes. [Mail us](mailto:info@victoriametrics.com) if you are interested in.
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