PMM Dump (pmm-import-export-tool)

PMM Dump is a tool that allows to transfer metrics and QAN data from one PMM Server instance to another. It helps Percona Services engineers troubleshoot issues.

How to build?

You will need to have Go 1.21+ installed.

In the root directory: make build

Using PMM Dump

The transfer process is split into two main parts: export and import.

In order to run either export or import, you have to specify PMM URL with credentials at least:

./pmm-dump export --pmm-url "http://USER:PASS@HOST"
./pmm-dump import --pmm-url "http://USER:PASS@HOST" --dump-path FILENAME.tar.gz

Also, you can use credentials flags or envars:

./pmm-dump export --pmm-url "http://HOST" --pmm-user USER --pmm-pass PASS
PMM_USER=USER PMM_PASS=PASS ./pmm-dump import --pmm-url "http://HOST" --dump-path FILENAME.tar.gz

Here are main commands/flags:

Command	Flag	Description	Example
any	pmm-url	URL of PMM instance. Envar: PMM_URL	http://admin:admin@localhost
any	pmm-host	Host of PMM instance(with scheme). Envar: PMM_HOST	http://localhost
any	pmm-port	Port of PMM instance. Envar: PMM_PORT	80
any	pmm-user	PMM credentials user. Envar: PMM_USER	-
any	pmm-pass	PMM credentials password. Envar: PMM_PASS	-
any	pmm-token	PMM API token. Envar: PMM_TOKEN
any	pmm-cookie	PMM auth cookie value. Envar: PMM_COOKIE
any	dump-core	Process core metrics	-
any	dump-qan	Process QAN metrics	-
any	workers	Set the number of import/export workers	4
export	start-ts	Start date-time to limit timeframe (in RFC3339 format)	2006-01-02T15:04:05Z (please note that you can't use offset for UTC time) 2006-01-02T15:04:05-07:00
export	end-ts	End date-time to limit timeframe (in RFC3339 format)	2006-01-02T15:04:05Z (please note that you can't use offset for UTC time) 2006-01-02T15:04:05-07:00
export	ignore-load	Disable checking for load values	-
export	max-load	Max value of a metric to postpone export	CPU=50,RAM=50,MYRAM=10
export	critical-load	Max value of a metric to stop export	CPU=70,RAM=70,MYRAM=30
export	stdout	Redirect output to STDOUT	-
export	vm-native-data	Use VictoriaMetrics' native export format. Reduces dump size, but can be incompatible between PMM versions	-
import	vm-content-limit	Limit the chunk content size for VictoriaMetrics (in bytes). Doesn't work with native format	1024
any	dump-path, d	Path to dump file	/tmp/pmm-dumps/pmm-dump-1624342596.tar.gz
any	verbose, v	Enable verbose (debug) mode	-
any	allow-insecure-certs	For self-signed certificates	-
show-meta	-	Shows dump meta in human readable format	-
show-meta	no-prettify	Shows raw dump meta	-
version	-	Shows binary version	-

For filtering you could use the following commands (will be improved in the future):

Command	Flag	Description	Example
export	ts-selector	Timeseries selector (for VM only)	{service_name="mongo"}
export	where	WHERE statement (for CH only)	service_name='mongo'
export	dashboard	Dashboard name (for VM only)	MongoDB Instances Overview
export	instance	Filter by service name	mongo

You could filter by instance using service name or id. For example, we have registered the following mongodb instance:

> pmm-admin add mongodb --username=pmm_mongodb --password=password mongo mongodb:27017
MongoDB Service added.
Service ID  : 6d7fbaa0-6b21-4c3f-a4a7-4be1e4f58b11
Service name: mongo

So the value of ts-selector would be: {service_name="mongo"} or {service_id="6d7fbaa0-6b21-4c3f-a4a7-4be1e4f58b11"}. The same for where QAN filter: service_name='mongo' or service_id='6d7fbaa0-6b21-4c3f-a4a7-4be1e4f58b11'. Note: On version 2 value of ts-selector would be: {service_name="mongo"} or {service_id="/service_id/6d7fbaa0-6b21-4c3f-a4a7-4be1e4f58b11"} and QAN filter: service_name='mongo' or service_id='/service_id/6d7fbaa0-6b21-4c3f-a4a7-4be1e4f58b11'. Also, you can use instance option which filters QAN and core metrics by service name

> ./pmm-dump export --pmm-url="http://admin:admin@localhost:8282" --ts-selector=`{service_name="mongo"}` --dump-qan --where=`service_name='mongo'`

is same as

> ./pmm-dump export --pmm-url="http://admin:admin@localhost:8282" --instance="mongo" --dump-qan

To filter by multiple dashboards, you can use dashboard flag multiple times:

> ./pmm-dump export --pmm-url="http://admin:admin@localhost:8282" --dashboard='MongoDB Instances Overview' --dashboard='MySQL Instances Overview'`

In some cases you would need to override default configuration for VM/CH processing:

Command	Flag	Description	Example
any	victoria-metrics-url	URL of Victoria Metrics	http://admin:admin@localhost:8282/prometheus
any	click-house-url	URL of Click House	http://localhost:9000?database=pmm
export	chunk-time-range	Time range to be fit into a single chunk (VM only)	45s, 5m, 1h
export	chunk-rows	Amount of rows to fit into a single chunk (CH only)	1000

Using in pipelines

You can redirect output to STDOUT with --stdout option. It's useful to redirect output to another pmm-dump in a pipeline:

> ./pmm-dump export --pmm-url="http://admin:admin@localhost:8282" --dump-qan --stdout | ./pmm-dump import --pmm-url="http://admin:admin@localhost:8282" --dump-qan 

Stop or postpone during export

You can set threshold values to stop or postpone pmm-dump during export using max-load and critical-load options.

The syntax for these options is following:

<threshold>=<percent_value>

You can provide multiple threshold values separated by commas. For example:

--max-load='CPU=100,RAM=30'

Available thresholds:

• CPU - CPU load of PMM instance in percents (0-100)
• RAM - RAM load of PMM instance in percents (0-100)
• MYRAM - RAM load of instance which uses pmm-dump in percents (0-100)

About the dump file

Dump file is a tar archive compressed via gzip. Here is the shape of dump file:

• dump.tar.gz/meta.json - contains metadata about the dump (JSON object)
• dump.tar.gz/vm/ - contains Victoria Metrics data chunks split by timeframe (in native VM format)
• dump.tar.gz/ch/ - contains ClickHouse data chunks split by rows count (in TSV format)

Using Makefile for local development environment

There is a Makefile that contains commands to build and test pmm-dump locally. It uses docker-compose to set up PMM Server, PMM Client and MongoDB.

You will need to have Go 1.21+ and Docker installed.

Rule	Description
make	Shortcut for fast test
make build	Builds pmm-dump binary
make up	Sets up docker containers
mongo-reg	Registers MongoDB in PMM
mongo-insert	Executes MongoDB insert
make down	Shuts down docker containers
make re	Shortcut for down up
make export-all	Runs export from local PMM
make run-tests	Runs all tests
make run-e2e-tests	Runs all e2e tests
make run-e2e-tests-v2	Runs all e2e tests for version 2
make run-unit-tests	Runs all unit tests

Read Makefile for more.

Running End-to-End Tests

For detailed instructions on executing end-to-end tests, refer to Executing e2e tests.