Prometheus 2.30: Performance and Query Advances

Introduction

Prometheus 2.30 — Performance and Query Advances — was released on October 27, 2021.

In Kubernetes, the hard part isn’t collecting data — it’s turning traces, metrics, and logs into something you can act on quickly.

In this release: Prometheus 2.30 introduces native histograms, improved query performance, and enhanced remote write capabilities for large-scale Kubernetes monitoring.

Native Histograms

• Native histogram support provides efficient storage and querying of high-cardinality histogram data.
• Sparse histograms enable efficient representation of distributions with many zero buckets.
• Query functions expansion includes new functions for histogram analysis and aggregation.
• Backward compatibility ensures existing histogram metrics continue to work without changes.

Query Performance Improvements

1. Query engine optimizations reduce latency for complex PromQL queries, especially those involving large time ranges.
2. Index improvements accelerate label and series lookups, improving query response times.
3. Memory management enhancements reduce memory usage during query execution.
4. Concurrent query handling improves throughput for high-query-load scenarios.

Remote Write Enhancements

• Queue management improvements provide better backpressure handling and retry logic.
• Sharding enhancements enable more efficient distribution of metrics across endpoints.
• Compression support reduces bandwidth usage for remote write operations.
• Error handling improvements provide better recovery from transient failures.

Kubernetes Integration

• Service discovery improvements enhance automatic discovery of Kubernetes resources.
• Label management enhancements provide better handling of Kubernetes label changes.
• Scrape configuration improvements simplify setup for complex deployments.
• RBAC support enables secure metric collection with service accounts.

Getting Started

kubectl create namespace monitoring
kubectl apply -n monitoring -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/prometheus-operator/prometheus-operator/v0.50.0/example/prometheus-operator-crd/monitoring.coreos.com_prometheuses.yaml

Summary

Prometheus 2.30 continues to evolve as the foundation of Kubernetes observability, providing teams with powerful metrics collection and querying capabilities.