Prometheus vs InfluxDB

Gerard · December 20, 2022, 4:20pm

Hi Team,

Currently, we are using InfluxDB 1.x for K6 output and Prometheus for different purposes (non-k6 work) within the project. The recent K6 release comes with Prometheus output.

I have the authority to change the K6 output to any, but I need to justify the audience. Guide me on this.

eyeveebe · December 22, 2022, 5:20pm

Hi @Gerard

Awesome that you already want to try the newest k6 Prometheus remote write output.

If you are already using Prometheus, that looks like one of the selling points you have. You can reduce your platform complexity removing the need for InfluxDB.

Also, if you wanted/needed to upgrade to InfluxDB v2, at this time you would need to use the extension. It’s still not part of the core: Switch to the InfluxDB 2 Go client library · Issue #1730 · grafana/k6 · GitHub. While the Prometheus remote write output is up to date with the latest version available.

I was discussing this with @codebien and he added some points in favor of k6 Prometheus remote write output:

It aggregates metrics, so it won’t overload the remote write server the same way we’ve sometimes seen our InfluxDB output do.
It’s compatible with InfluxDB. It can be used to write to InfluxDB, while the InfluxDB output cannot write to Prometheus.
it can be used directly with Influx v1 (not v2), see Prometheus endpoints support in InfluxDB | InfluxDB OSS 1.8 Documentation
Can be used with Grafana Cloud.

The main drawback is that the k6 Prometheus remote write output is still experimental. So you could see breaking changes in the future that you need to take into account.

And you should also consider (in most cases it’s not relevant) that InfluxDB timestamps are in nanoseconds precision, while Prometheus has millisecond precision.

I hope this helps.

Cheers!