Different interval per query about sql_exporter

[burningalchemist]

Hi @NicoForce, thank you for sharing your problem and suggestion. Let's try to find a solution for your needs.

The thing with Prometheus is that by design it's intended to perform synchronous metric scrapes. So following this design "SQL Exporter" doesn't automatically make any DB requests. Whenever Prometheus sends a request to SQL Exporter, it sends a respective request to the DB and returns a formatted response. You can find a bit more details in the Why it exists section.

That is why we also can't add scrape intervals per query - we simply do not control scraping here.

However, in Prometheus you can configure separate jobs and set parameters like scrape_interval, scrape_timeout for each. While scrape_interval parameter can be used to run calls on at a given schedule, scrape_timeout value will be passed to SQL Exporter via the X-Prometheus-Scrape-Timeout-Seconds header to determine scrape timeout.

Also, on the SQL Exporter side, you can configure separate jobs too. They can hit different targets with different queries. With min_interval you can add minimum interval between query executions, i.e. scrapes will be cached to prevent unnecessary pressure on DB. Take a look at this config for a hint.

I'd say, try things out and let me know. It could be that having two sql exporter instances in your case is easier.