Today I messed around with a new feature in Trickster, and boy, was it a learning curve! It’s called “targets per route run,” and it basically lets you control how many targets within a route get checked each time Trickster runs.
Getting Started
First, I downloaded the latest Trickster build. I already had it installed, but I wanted to make sure I had the freshest version with all the newest toys.
Then, I opened up my Trickster configuration file. This is where all the magic happens, where you tell Trickster what to do and how to do it.
Diving into the Config
I already had a bunch of routes set up, pointing to different Prometheus instances I’m monitoring. So, I picked one of those routes to play with.
I added a new line in that route’s config: targets_per_route_run: 2. I figured I’d start small. My thinking was, “Okay, each time this route runs, Trickster should only check two of the targets in that route.”
Testing it Out
Next, I restarted Trickster. Gotta do that anytime you change the config, right? Then I fired up my Grafana dashboard to watch what happened.
At first, I was scratching my head. Everything looked… normal. Then I realized I needed to wait a bit longer. Trickster wasn’t hitting all the targets at once anymore, so it took a little more time for all the data to come in.
Tweaking and Observing
I played around with the targets_per_route_run value. I tried setting it to 1, then 3, then back to 2. I watched how it affected the load on my Prometheus instances and the refresh rate in Grafana.
It was pretty cool! I could see how this would be super useful if you have a ton of targets and you want to avoid overwhelming your Prometheus servers. You can kind of throttle the checks and spread them out over time.
Wrapping Up
So, that’s my little adventure with “targets per route run.” It’s a neat little feature that gives you more fine-grained control over how Trickster interacts with your targets. It’s definitely something I’ll be keeping in my toolbox for managing larger monitoring setups. It’s not something everyone will need every day, but when you need it, you really need it!
