PCP Valkey

Introduction

This data source provides a native interface between Grafana and Performance Co-Pilot (PCP), allowing PCP metric data to be presented in Grafana panels, such as graphs, tables, heatmaps, etc. Under the hood, the data source makes REST API query requests to the PCP pmproxy service, which can be running either locally or on a remote host. The pmproxy daemon can be local or remote and uses the Valkey time-series database (local or remote) for persistent storage.

Setup Valkey and PCP daemons

$ sudo dnf install valkey
$ sudo systemctl start valkey pmlogger pmproxy

Query Language

Syntax: [metric.name] '{metadata qualifiers}'

Examples:

kernel.all.load
kernel.all.load{hostname == "web01"}
network.interface.in.bytes{agent == "linux"}

Documentation of the pmseries query language can be found in the man page of pmseries.

Query Formats

Time Series

Returns the data as time series. If there are multiple series for a metric, all series will be shown as separate targets (i.e., a line in a line graph). For metrics with instance domains, each instance is shown as a separate target. If there are multiple queries defined, all values will be combined in the same graph.

Heatmap

Transforms the data for the heatmap panel. Instance names have to be in the following format: <lower_bound>-<upper_bound>, for example, 512-1023 (the bcc PMDA produces histograms in this format).

The following settings have to be set in the heatmap panel options:

Setting	Value
Format	Time Series Buckets
Bucket bound	Upper

Geomap

Transforms the data for the geomap panel. If there are multiple series(hosts) for a metric, all series(hosts) will be shown on the map. If a metric has multiple instances, all instances will be shown on the map. The latest values of the currently selected timeframe will be displayed.

Legend Format Templating

The following variables can be used in the legend format box:

Variable	Description	Example
`$expr`	query expression	`rate(disk.dm.avactive)`
`$metric`	metric name	`disk.dev.read`
`$metric0`	last part of metric name	`read`
`$instance`	instance name	`sda`
`$some_label`	label value	anything

Query Functions

The following functions are available for dashboard variables of type Query:

Function	Description	Example
`metrics([pattern])`	returns all metrics matching a glob pattern (if no pattern is defined, all metrics are returned)	`metrics(disk.*)`
`label_names([pattern])`	returns all label names matching a glob pattern (if no pattern is defined, all metrics are returned)	`label_names(host*)`
`label_values(label)`	returns all label values for the specified label	`label_values(hostname)`