doc: Clarify the limits of dumping/backfilling via OpenMetrics

This is about native histograms (not yet supported) and staleness markers (for which OpenMetrics support isn't even planned). Signed-off-by: beorn7 <[email protected]>
rajagopalanand · May 21, 2024 · 3127a40 · 3127a40
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Showing 3 changed files with 5 additions and 2 deletions.
diff --git a/cmd/promtool/main.go b/cmd/promtool/main.go
@@ -240,7 +240,7 @@ func main() {
 	dumpMaxTime := tsdbDumpCmd.Flag("max-time", "Maximum timestamp to dump.").Default(strconv.FormatInt(math.MaxInt64, 10)).Int64()
 	dumpMatch := tsdbDumpCmd.Flag("match", "Series selector. Can be specified multiple times.").Default("{__name__=~'(?s:.*)'}").Strings()
 
-	tsdbDumpOpenMetricsCmd := tsdbCmd.Command("dump-openmetrics", "[Experimental] Dump samples from a TSDB into OpenMetrics format. Native histograms are not dumped.")
+	tsdbDumpOpenMetricsCmd := tsdbCmd.Command("dump-openmetrics", "[Experimental] Dump samples from a TSDB into OpenMetrics text format, excluding native histograms and staleness markers, which are not representable in OpenMetrics.")
 	dumpOpenMetricsPath := tsdbDumpOpenMetricsCmd.Arg("db path", "Database path (default is "+defaultDBPath+").").Default(defaultDBPath).String()
 	dumpOpenMetricsSandboxDirRoot := tsdbDumpOpenMetricsCmd.Flag("sandbox-dir-root", "Root directory where a sandbox directory would be created in case WAL replay generates chunks. The sandbox directory is cleaned up at the end.").Default(defaultDBPath).String()
 	dumpOpenMetricsMinTime := tsdbDumpOpenMetricsCmd.Flag("min-time", "Minimum timestamp to dump.").Default(strconv.FormatInt(math.MinInt64, 10)).Int64()

diff --git a/docs/command-line/promtool.md b/docs/command-line/promtool.md
@@ -585,7 +585,7 @@ Dump samples from a TSDB.
 
 ##### `promtool tsdb dump-openmetrics`
 
-[Experimental] Dump samples from a TSDB into OpenMetrics format. Native histograms are not dumped.
+[Experimental] Dump samples from a TSDB into OpenMetrics text format, excluding native histograms and staleness markers, which are not representable in OpenMetrics.
 
 
 

diff --git a/docs/storage.md b/docs/storage.md
@@ -197,6 +197,9 @@ or time-series database to Prometheus. To do so, the user must first convert the
 source data into [OpenMetrics](https://openmetrics.io/) format, which is the
 input format for the backfilling as described below.
 
+Note that native histograms and staleness markers are not supported by this
+procedure, as they cannot be represented in the OpenMetrics format.
+
 ### Usage
 
 Backfilling can be used via the Promtool command line. Promtool will write the blocks