dennis zhuang
3de4feddd5
* feat(otlp): report the cause of rejected trace spans
When trace-v1 ingestion cannot coerce an attribute value, it falls back to
single-span writes and rejects the bad span. That behavior is correct, but the
OTLP partial-success message only carried `Rejected span <trace_id>:<span_id>
(InvalidArguments)`: the column, the source value, the source type and the
target type were all dropped, so locating the bad attribute required adding a
detailed exporter on the collector side and replaying traffic.
Two places lost the information. `prepare_trace_column_rewrites` built a message
without the failing value, and the span rejection path kept only the status code
from the error.
Coercion errors now name the failing value, e.g.
failed to coerce trace column 'span_attributes.http.response.body.size'
in table 'opentelemetry_traces' from String("") to Int64
and the rejection detail carries that cause. Values are user data, so a string
keeps at most 16 characters, is escaped, and binary payloads report only their
length; the cause itself is bounded at 256 characters. Both truncations cut on a
char boundary.
Failure details now deduplicate: repeats of the same (site, cause) collapse into
one entry with an occurrence count, keyed on the untruncated cause so two
failures that differ past the display limit stay separate. Only four distinct
entries are retained and the rest are counted, which keeps the state bounded no
matter how many distinct bad values a request carries. A fully rejected request
is logged at warn level and a partial success at debug level, since the latter
repeats every export interval; the detail goes out as a Debug field so a newline
in an attribute key cannot forge log lines.
Rejection semantics are unchanged: partial success, same accepted and rejected
counts, same HTTP status mapping.
Signed-off-by: Dennis Zhuang <killme2008@gmail.com>
* refactor(otlp): compare failure keys directly instead of hashing
The dedup identity was a DefaultHasher fingerprint of `(label, key)`, which
bought a fixed 8 bytes per entry at the cost of an import, four lines, and a
collision argument the reader has to make. Entries are capped at four and a
cause runs a couple of hundred characters, so the saving is about a kilobyte
per in-flight request while the column name it avoids retaining is already held
several times over by the request itself.
Compare the strings instead, keeping the untruncated cause as the key so
failures differing past the display limit still stay apart. Labels are metric
label values and always static, so the entry borrows them.
Signed-off-by: Dennis Zhuang <killme2008@gmail.com>
---------
Signed-off-by: Dennis Zhuang <killme2008@gmail.com>
Metrics, logs, and traces.
One engine, on your infrastructure.
A columnar database for metrics, logs, and traces on object storage. Apache-2.0 licensed core.
User Guide | API Docs | Roadmap 2026
stable for production · canary includes pre-releases · nightly is a weekly snapshot of main
- Introduction
- Why You Might Use It
- Overview
- What's Supported
- Compatibility and Migration
- Limitations and Edition Boundary
- Architecture
- Try GreptimeDB
- Getting Started
- Build From Source
- Tools & Extensions
- Project Status
- Community
- License
- Commercial Support
- Contributing
- Acknowledgement
Introduction
GreptimeDB is an open-source observability database. Metrics, logs, and traces run on one columnar engine over object storage and share one table model: tags, timestamp, and fields. When signals carry common identifiers such as service, host, or trace ID, you can correlate them in SQL without moving data between databases.
Ingest through OpenTelemetry, Prometheus Remote Write, Loki Push, or Elasticsearch Bulk. Use SQL across observability data and PromQL for metrics. Migrate ingestion one signal at a time without rebuilding your collectors.
Why You Might Use It
- You run Prometheus plus Loki or Elasticsearch and want one backend instead of three
- You have outgrown Prometheus on cardinality or retention and don't want the Thanos/Mimir operational surface
- You need long retention on object storage without a separate analytics stack
- You want to query telemetry with SQL, not only a domain query language
- You are storing GenAI or agent telemetry (OTel GenAI conventions) alongside infrastructure signals
- You need the same engine and semantics on resource-constrained devices
Learn more in Why GreptimeDB.
Overview
A quick overview of what GreptimeDB ingests, how it connects to other systems, and what its distributed engine lets you do.
What's Supported
| Ingest | OpenTelemetry (OTLP), Prometheus Remote Write, Loki Push, Elasticsearch Bulk, InfluxDB line protocol, gRPC |
| Query | SQL, PromQL, Jaeger-compatible trace queries, MySQL and PostgreSQL wire protocols |
| Storage | S3, GCS, Azure Blob and S3-compatible endpoints as primary storage, with memory and local-disk caches |
| Built in | Retention policies, downsampling, continuous aggregation, explicit table partitioning, and inverted / skipping / fulltext indexes |
Compute and storage are disaggregated: object storage holds the data, while memory and local-disk caches keep recent and frequently queried data close to compute.
Compatibility and Migration
Compatibility is per protocol, and query-side coverage is narrower than ingestion.
| Compatible | Not compatible | |
|---|---|---|
| Prometheus | Remote Write ingestion; PromQL queries | Gaps are listed in PromQL compatibility |
| Loki | Push ingestion; dual-write through Grafana Alloy makes the cutover gradual | LogQL and the rest of the Loki query API |
| Elasticsearch | _bulk ingestion in the open-source core; QueryDSL partially, in Enterprise |
Most other Elasticsearch APIs |
Benchmarks:
Limitations and Edition Boundary
Cluster deployment, object storage, the Flow engine, and every ingestion protocol listed above are in the Apache-2.0 build. Repartitioning, region migration, and index creation are manual operations there.
Read replicas, workload isolation, and automated repartitioning are GreptimeDB Enterprise features, along with enterprise security and governance. The Enterprise overview has the current list, and pricing has the edition comparison.
Architecture
GreptimeDB can run in two modes:
- Standalone — single binary for development and small deployments.
- Distributed — four components, each independently scalable:
- Frontend — protocol entry (OTel, Prometheus, MySQL/PostgreSQL, gRPC, ingestion APIs for Elasticsearch/InfluxDB/Loki) and the distributed query engine. Stateless, scales horizontally.
- Datanode — region engine with WAL, memtable, SST, cache, compaction, and indexes. Persists data to object storage. Elastic.
- Metasrv — metadata, routing, repartitioning, and security. Backed by a pluggable KV layer (etcd or RDS).
- Flownode (optional) — continuous flow computation (streaming and materialized views).
For deeper coverage, see the architecture doc or DeepWiki.
Try GreptimeDB
For AI agents — paste this prompt into your agent:
Read https://docs.greptime.com/SKILL.md and follow the instructions
to deploy, configure, ingest, and query GreptimeDB.
docker run -p 127.0.0.1:4000-4003:4000-4003 \
-v "$(pwd)/greptimedb_data:/greptimedb_data" \
--name greptime --rm \
greptime/greptimedb:latest standalone start \
--http-addr 0.0.0.0:4000 \
--grpc-bind-addr 0.0.0.0:4001 \
--mysql-addr 0.0.0.0:4002 \
--postgres-addr 0.0.0.0:4003
Dashboard: http://localhost:4000/dashboard
Read more in the full Install Guide.
Troubleshooting:
- Cannot connect to the database? Ensure that ports
4000,4001,4002, and4003are not blocked by a firewall or used by other services. - Failed to start? Check the container logs with
docker logs greptimefor further details.
Getting Started
Build From Source
Prerequisites:
- Rust toolchain — nightly, pinned by
rust-toolchain.toml - Protobuf compiler (>= 3.15)
- C/C++ building essentials:
gcc/g++/autoconfand the glibc dev package (libc6-devon Ubuntu,glibc-develon Fedora) - Python toolchain (optional, only for some test scripts)
Build and run:
make # build greptime binary
cargo run -- standalone start # start in standalone mode
Common dev commands:
make fmt # format Rust code
make clippy # lint (fails on warnings)
make test # unit + integration tests (uses cargo-nextest)
make sqlness-test # SQL regression tests
See the Contribution Guidelines for the full developer workflow.
Tools & Extensions
- Kubernetes: GreptimeDB Operator
- Helm Charts: Greptime Helm Charts
- Dashboard: Web UI
- gRPC Ingester: Go, Java, C++, Erlang, Rust, .NET, TypeScript
- Grafana Data Source: GreptimeDB Grafana data source plugin
- Grafana Dashboard: Official Dashboard for monitoring
Project Status
GreptimeDB is generally available, with stable APIs and regular releases. It runs in production at scale — OceanBase Cloud operates 80+ GreptimeDB clusters managing 300 TB of logs, cutting log storage cost by 60%+ after migrating from Grafana Loki. See more in case studies.
Read the v1.0 highlights and 2026 roadmap, or browse the version reference.
If GreptimeDB is useful to you, please star the repo.
Community
We invite you to engage and contribute!
License
GreptimeDB is an open-core project. Its core is licensed under the Apache License 2.0.
A small set of peripheral, enterprise-only features are gated behind the
enterprise Cargo feature (not built by default) and are governed by the
separate GreptimeDB Enterprise License. Source files under
that license carry an explicit Enterprise License header.
Commercial Support
Scaling observability on your infrastructure? GreptimeDB Enterprise adds the operational, security, and support layer for production deployments. Contact us for details.
Contributing
- Read our Contribution Guidelines.
- Explore Internal Concepts and DeepWiki.
- Pick up a good first issue and join the #contributors Slack channel.
Acknowledgement
Special thanks to all contributors! See AUTHOR.md.
- Uses Apache Arrow™ (memory model)
- Apache Parquet™ (file storage)
- Apache DataFusion™ (query engine)
- Apache OpenDAL™ (data access abstraction)
All trademarks, logos, and brand names referenced in this README and in the Overview diagram are the property of their respective owners. Their use is for identification purposes only and does not imply endorsement or affiliation.