PromscaleManage data in Promscale

Maintenance jobs

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Promscale implements retention and compression through maintenance jobs. These jobs are automatically created when you install Promscale and meet the basic requirements, but may require tuning.

Inspect the maintenance jobs

The Promscale maintenance jobs leverage the user-defined actions in the TimescaleDB framework so that you can use the TimescaleDB interfaces to inspect the maintenance jobs.

Inspecting the maintenance

To view the maintenance jobs:

SELECT * FROM timescaledb_information.jobs
WHERE proc_schema IN ('_prom_catalog', '_ps_trace');

The output is simialr to:

job_id |      application_name      | schedule_interval | max_runtime | max_retries | retry_period |  proc_schema  |            proc_name            |  owner   | scheduled |                       config                       |          next_start           | hypertable_schema | hypertable_name
--------+----------------------------+-------------------+-------------+-------------+--------------+---------------+---------------------------------+----------+-----------+----------------------------------------------------+-------------------------------+-------------------+-----------------
   1004 | User-Defined Action [1004] | 01:00:00          | 00:00:00    |          -1 | 00:05:00     | _ps_trace     | execute_tracing_compression_job | postgres | t         | {"log_verbose": false, "hypertable_name": "link"}  | 2022-06-03 12:09:10.370909+00 |                   |
   1003 | User-Defined Action [1003] | 01:00:00          | 00:00:00    |          -1 | 00:05:00     | _ps_trace     | execute_tracing_compression_job | postgres | t         | {"log_verbose": false, "hypertable_name": "event"} | 2022-06-03 12:09:16.336568+00 |                   |
   1002 | User-Defined Action [1002] | 01:00:00          | 00:00:00    |          -1 | 00:05:00     | _ps_trace     | execute_tracing_compression_job | postgres | t         | {"log_verbose": false, "hypertable_name": "span"}  | 2022-06-03 12:09:23.121163+00 |                   |
   1001 | User-Defined Action [1001] | 00:30:00          | 00:00:00    |          -1 | 00:05:00     | _prom_catalog | execute_maintenance_job         | postgres | t         |                                                    | 2022-06-03 12:00:39.737209+00 |                   |
   1000 | User-Defined Action [1000] | 00:30:00          | 00:00:00    |          -1 | 00:05:00     | _prom_catalog | execute_maintenance_job         | postgres | t         |                                                    | 2022-06-03 12:00:39.782075+00 |                   |
(5 rows)

In the sample output there are five maintenance jobs, two instances of _prom_catalog.execute_maintenance_job, and three instances of _ps_trace.execute_tracing_compression_job.

  • The execute_maintenance_job performs metric retention, metric compression, and trace retention.

  • The execute_tracing_compression_job performs compression on one of the trace hypertables span, event, and link.

  • When a job is currently running, the value in the next_start column is -infinity.

To view additional information about the jobs: 

SELECT js.* FROM timescaledb_information.jobs j
JOIN timescaledb_information.job_stats js USING (job_id)
WHERE j.proc_schema IN ('_prom_catalog', '_ps_trace');

The output is simialr to:

hypertable_schema | hypertable_name | job_id |      last_run_started_at      |    last_successful_finish     | last_run_status | job_status | last_run_duration |          next_start           | total_runs | total_successes | total_failures
-------------------+-----------------+--------+-------------------------------+-------------------------------+-----------------+------------+-------------------+-------------------------------+------------+-----------------+----------------
                   |                 |   1000 | 2022-06-03 11:30:32.981935+00 | 2022-06-03 11:30:39.782075+00 | Success         | Scheduled  | 00:00:06.80014    | 2022-06-03 12:00:39.782075+00 |         74 |              74 |              0
                   |                 |   1001 | 2022-06-03 11:30:33.02772+00  | 2022-06-03 11:30:39.737209+00 | Success         | Scheduled  | 00:00:06.709489   | 2022-06-03 12:00:39.737209+00 |         74 |              74 |              0
                   |                 |   1002 | 2022-06-03 11:09:17.345948+00 | 2022-06-03 11:09:23.121163+00 | Success         | Scheduled  | 00:00:05.775215   | 2022-06-03 12:09:23.121163+00 |         41 |              41 |              0
                   |                 |   1003 | 2022-06-03 11:09:12.887644+00 | 2022-06-03 11:09:16.336568+00 | Success         | Scheduled  | 00:00:03.448924   | 2022-06-03 12:09:16.336568+00 |         41 |              41 |              0
                   |                 |   1004 | 2022-06-03 11:09:08.806099+00 | 2022-06-03 11:09:10.370909+00 | Success         | Scheduled  | 00:00:01.56481    | 2022-06-03 12:09:10.370909+00 |         41 |              41 |              0
(5 rows)

Tuning the number of jobs

As execute_maintenance_job is single-threaded, and runs in a single process, one maintenance job uses a maximum of one CPU. On systems with high throughput, it's possible that the default of two maintenance jobs is not sufficient to keep up with the amount of data being ingested.

To determine if the maintenance jobs are lagging behind, compare the duration of the last run with the interval. If the most recent run is larger than the interval, then the job is lagging behind.

To compare the duration of the last run with the interval:

SELECT job_id, schedule_interval, last_run_duration
FROM timescaledb_information.jobs
JOIN timescaledb_information.job_stats USING (job_id)
WHERE proc_schema IN ('_ps_trace', '_prom_catalog')
AND last_run_duration > schedule_interval;

To increase the number of maintenance jobs use the prom_api.config_maintenance_jobs(number_jobs integer, new_schedule_interval interval, new_config jsonb) function. You can provide the number of jobs, the scheduled interval, and optionally a new configuration for the job in this function.

For example, to increase the number of jobs to four, but retain the default interval use:

SELECT config_maintenance_jobs(4, '30 minutes'::INTERVAL);