From c6abaa824d912826c3f8795b755cf7f9a1591a22 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Aliaksandr Valialkin <valyala@victoriametrics.com> Date: Thu, 6 Jan 2022 23:09:07 +0200 Subject: [PATCH] docs/FAQ.md: add `what is the difference between vmagent and Prometheus agent` chapter --- docs/FAQ.md | 14 ++++++++++++++ 1 file changed, 14 insertions(+) diff --git a/docs/FAQ.md b/docs/FAQ.md index 59992c2879..607c6cd141 100644 --- a/docs/FAQ.md +++ b/docs/FAQ.md @@ -66,6 +66,20 @@ and send data to multiple remote storage systems, vmagent has the following addi - [Prometheus remote_write proxy](https://docs.victoriametrics.com/vmagent.html#prometheus-remote_write-proxy) +## What is the difference between vmagent and Prometheus agent? + +Both [vmagent](https://docs.victoriametrics.com/vmagent.html) and [Prometheus agent](https://prometheus.io/blog/2021/11/16/agent/) serve the same purpose - to efficently scrape Prometheus-compatible targets at the edge. The have the following differences: + +- vmagent usually requires lower amounts of CPU, RAM and disk IO comparing to Prometheus agent. +- Prometheus agent supports only pull-based data collection (e.g. it can scrape Prometheus-compatible targets), while vmagent supports both pull and push data collection - it can accept data via many popular data ingestion protocols such as InfluxDB line protocol, Graphite protocol, OpenTSDB protocol, DataDog protocol, Prometheus protocol, CSV and JSON - see [these docs](https://docs.victoriametrics.com/vmagent.html#features). +- vmagent can easily scale horizontally to multiple instances for scraping big number of targets - see [these docs](https://docs.victoriametrics.com/vmagent.html#scraping-big-number-of-targets). +- vmagent supports [improved relabeling](https://docs.victoriametrics.com/vmagent.html#relabeling). +- vmagent can limit the number of scraped metrics per target. See [these docs](https://docs.victoriametrics.com/vmagent.html#cardinality-limiter). +- vmagent supports loading scrape configs from multiple files - see [these docs](https://docs.victoriametrics.com/vmagent.html#loading-scrape-configs-from-multiple-files). +- vmagent supports data reading and data writing from/to Kafka - see [these docs](https://docs.victoriametrics.com/vmagent.html#kafka-integration). +- vmagent can read and update scrape configs from http and https urls, while Prometheus agent can read scrape configs only from local filesystem. + + ## Is it safe to enable [remote write](https://prometheus.io/docs/operating/integrations/#remote-endpoints-and-storage) in Prometheus? Yes. Prometheus continues writing data to local storage after enabling remote write, so all the existing local storage data