Change config docs to YAML, adjust to changes.

content/docs/operating/configuration.md

@@ -6,66 +6,189 @@ nav_icon: sliders
 # Configuration
 
 Prometheus is configured via command-line flags and a configuration file. While
-the command-line flags configure general system parameters (such as storage
+the command-line flags configure immutable system parameters (such as storage
 locations, amount of data to keep on disk and in memory, etc.), the
 configuration file defines everything related to scraping [jobs and their
 instances](/docs/concepts/jobs_instances/), as well as which [rule files to
 load](/docs/querying/rules/#configuring-rules).
 
-To view all available command-line flags, run Prometheus with the `-h` option.
+To view all available command-line flags, run `prometheus -h`.
+
+
+## Configuration file
 
 To specify which configuration file to load, use the `-config.file` flag.
-A configuration file is written in ASCII protocol buffer form, and every
-available option is explained in detail in the protocol buffer schema
-definition at
-https://github.com/prometheus/prometheus/blob/master/config/config.proto.
+The configuration file (including rule files) can be reloaded at runtime by 
+sending SIGHUP to the Prometheus process.
+
+The file is written in [YAML format](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YAML),
+defined by the scheme described below.
+Brackets indicate that a parameter is optional. For non-list parameters the
+value is set to the specified default.
+
+Generic placeholders are defined as follows:
+
+* `<duration>`: a duration matching the regular expression `[0-9]+[smhdwy]`
+* `<labelname>`: a string matching the regular expression `[a-zA-Z_][a-zA-Z0-9_]*`
+* `<labelvalue>`: a string of unicode characters
+* `<filename>`: a valid path in the current working directory
+
+The other placeholders are specified separately.
+
+A valid example file can be found [here](https://github.com/prometheus/prometheus/blob/fabxc/sd_yamlcfg/config/testdata/conf.good.yml).
+
+The global configuration specifies parameters valid in all other configuration
+contexts. They also serve as defaults for other configuration sections.
+
+
+```
+global:
+  # How frequently to scrape targets by default.
+  [ scrape_interval: <duration> | default = 1m ]
+
+  # How long until a scrape request times out.
+  [ scrape_timeout: <duration> | default = 10s ]
+
+  # How frequently to evaluate rules by default.
+  [ evaluation_interval: <duration> | default = 1m ]
+
+  # The labels to add to any timeseries that this Prometheus instance scrapes.
+  labels:
+    [ <labelname>: <labelvalue> ... ]
+
+# Rule files specifies a list of files from which rules are read.
+rule_files:
+  [ - <filepath> ... ]
+
+# A list of scrape configurations.
+scrape_configs:
+  [ - <scrape_config> ... ]
+```
+
+
+### Scrape configurations `<scrape_config>`
+
+The scrape config specifies a set of targets, which might dynamically change, and
+parameters describing how to scrape them.
+In the general case one scrape configuration specifies a single job. In advanced
+configurations this might change.
+
+Static targets can be configured via the `target_groups` parameter. The other
+configs allow dynamic target discovery. Additionally, the `relabel_configs` allow
+advanced modifications to any target belonging to the scrape config.
+
+```
+# The job name assigned to scraped metrics by default.
+job_name: <name>
+
+# How frequently to scrape targets from this job.
+[ scrape_interval: <duration> | default = <global_config.scrape_interval> ] 
+
+# Per-target timeout when scraping this job.
+[ scrape_timeout: <duration> | default = <global_config.scrape_timeout> ]
+
+# The HTTP resource path on which to fetch metrics from targets.
+[ metrics_path: <path> | default = /metrics ]
+
+# The URL scheme with which to fetch metrics from targets.
+[ scheme: <scheme> | default = http ] 
+
+# List of DNS service discovery configurations.
+dns_sd_configs:
+  [ - <dns_sd_config> ... ]
+
+# List of labeled target groups for this job.
+target_groups:
+  [ - <target_group> ... ]
+
+# List of relabel configurations.
+relabel_configs:
+  [ - <relabel_config> ... ]
+```
+
+Where `<scheme>` may be `http` or `https` and `<path>` is a valid URL path.
+`<job_name>` must be unique across all scrape configurations and adhere to the
+regex `[a-zA-Z_][a-zA-Z0-9_-]`.
+
+
+### Target groups `<target_group>`
+
+Target Groups collect a group of targets and specify a common label set for them.
+They are the canoncial way to specify static targets in a scrape config.
+
+```
+# The targets specified by the target group.
+targets: 
+  [ - '<host>' ]
+
+# Labels assigned to all metrics scraped from the targets.
+labels:
+  [ <labelname>: <labelvalue> ... ]
+```
+
+Where `<host>` is a valid string consisting of a hostname or IP followed by a port 
+number.
+
+
+### DNS-SD configurations `<dns_sd_config>`
+
+A DNS-SD configuration allows to specify a set of hosts for which DNS SRV records are
+queried. The DNS servers to be contacted are read from `/etc/resolv.conf`.
+
+The label `__meta_dns_srv_name` is attached to discovered targets with the queried
+SRV name as its value.
+
+```
+# A list of host names to be queried.
+names:
+  [ - <host> ]
+
+# The time after which the provided names are refreshed.
+[ refresh_interval: <duration> | default = 30s ]
+```
+
+Where `<host>` is a valid hostname.
+
+
+### Relabeling `<relabel_config>`
+
+Relabeling is a powerful tool to dynamically rewrite the label set of a target before
+its gets scraped. Multiple relabeling steps can be configured per scrape config. 
+They are applied to the label set of each target in order of their configuration.
+
+Initially, aside from the configured labels, the `job` label is set to the `job_name` value
+of the surrounding scrape configuration. The `__address__` label is set to the `<host>:<port>`
+value of the target.
+After relabeling the `instance` label is set to the value of `__address__` by default if
+it was not set during relabeling.
 
-Below is an example configuration which explains the most common options with
-some comments:
+Additional labels prefixed with `__meta_` may be available for relabeling. They are set
+by the service discovery mechanism that provided the target and vary between mechanisms.
+
+Labels starting with `__` will be removed from the label set after relabeling is completed.
 
 ```
-# Global settings and defaults.
-global {
-  # By default, scrape targets every 30 seconds.
-  scrape_interval: "30s"
-  # By default, evaluate alerting and recording rules every 30 seconds.
-  evaluation_interval: "30s"
-  # Add the label service="api" to all time series scraped by this Prometheus.
-  labels {
-    label {
-      name: "service"
-      value: "api"
-    }
-  }
-  # Load two files that define recording or alerting rules.
-  rule_file: "prometheus_base.rules"
-  rule_file: "api_service.rules"
-}
-
-# Monitor Prometheus itself.
-job {
-  # This job will be named "prometheus", so a job="prometheus" label will be
-  # added to all time series scraped from it.
-  name: "prometheus"
-  # Scrape this job every 15s, overriding the global default.
-  scrape_interval: "15s"
-  # Configure a group of static HTTP targets
-  target_group {
-    target: "http://localhost:9090/metrics"
-  }
-}
-
-# Monitor a set of a API servers.
-job {
-  # This job will be named "api-server", so a job="api-server" label will be
-  # added to all time series scraped from it.
-  name: "api-server"
-  # Discover targets for this job via service discovery (DNS-SD). The sd_name
-  # provided here needs to resolve to a DNS SRV record containing a set of
-  # IP:PORT pairs.
-  sd_name: "telemetry.server.prod.api.srv.my-domain.org"
-  # The SRV records do not have information about the endpoint to scrape, so it
-  # needs to be configured separately when discovering targets dynamically.
-  metrics_path: "/metrics"
-}
+# The source labels select values from existing labels. Their content is concatenated
+# by the configured separator and matched against the configured regular expression.
+source_labels: '[' <labelname> [, ...] ']'
+
+# Separator placed between concatenated source label values.
+[ separator: <string> | default = ; ]
+
+# Label to which the resulting value is written in a replace action.
+# It is mandatory for replace actions.
+[ target_label: <labelname> ]
+
+# Regular expression against which the extracted value is matched.
+regex: <regex>
+
+# Replacement value against which a regex replace is performed if the
+# regular expression matches.
+[ replacement: <string> | default = '' ]
+
+# Action to perform based on regex matching.
+[ action: <relabel_action> | default = replace ]
 ```
+
+Where  `<relabel_action> = drop | keep | replace` and `<regex>` is a valid
+regular expression.