Esteemed technical community,

The WMF’s SRE Observability team https://wikitech.wikimedia.org/wiki/SRE/Observability invites you to join our ongoing effort to migrate MediaWiki metrics to Prometheus https://wikitech.wikimedia.org/wiki/Prometheus, utilizing StatsLib https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Stats, an internally developed, Prometheus-capable metrics interface. This initiative is fundamental in unifying our metrics, improving MediaWiki observability, and reducing tool fragmentation. Your participation is crucial to drive this effort forward.

The Ask

We invite you to contribute to this project https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T350592. Your expertise can drive the success of this migration, helping us streamline and improve our monitoring capabilities.

We appreciate your support in migrating your component’s metrics to StatsLib (*T350592*) https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T350592; this involves:

-

Look up your component, extension, or module in the task above, claim (or create) the corresponding sub-task for your metrics, and follow the examples/docs available to migrate your metrics to the new metrics interface. -

Help deprecate and clean up/remove outdated metrics not in use (or graphed in dashboards). -

Collaborate with testing and provide feedback for a seamless transition.

Why Prometheus https://prometheus.io/docs/introduction/overview/?

We have been using Prometheus in production for several years as it offers several benefits over Graphite https://prometheus.io/docs/introduction/comparison/. Migrating MediaWiki off Graphite ensures we stay ahead with a supported, scalable metrics platform for more effective long-term, multidimensional metrics analysis and storage. The new stack provides more robust data labeling, storage, and query capabilities. This project facilitates the improvement of our production metrics infrastructure and deprecates older systems. The general thought process is outlined in T249164 RFC: Better interface for generating metrics in MediaWiki https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T249164.

Support and Resources:

We can assist via various channels such as email, phabricator and IRC (#wikimedia-observability on Libera.Chat), including periodic technical office hours (to be scheduled soon). Please contact me or visit the SRE Observability Team Interface Page https://office.wikimedia.org/wiki/Team_interfaces/SRE_-_Observability for ways to get involved.

Timeline

Please prioritize and schedule this work within the next few quarters to ensure a seamless transition and the sustainability of the MW production ecosystem. Together, we can achieve a more efficient and reliable Observability platform. Thank you in advance for your understanding and support.

Hackathon 2024!

We will be at this year’s hackathon https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Hackathon_2024 for those attending who are interested in participating or have any questions.

We appreciate your support and help; many thanks for your attention and to all those who have/are participating already!

Respectfully,

Leo

*Leo Mata* (he/him) Engineering Manager - Observability Wikimedia Foundation https://wikimediafoundation.org/