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Memcached integration for Grafana Cloud

Memcached is a distributed, in-memory key-value store used to speed up dynamic database-driven websites by caching information in memory.

This integration includes 3 useful alerts and 1 pre-built dashboard to help monitor and visualize Memcached metrics.

Before you begin

This integration relies on Grafana Alloy installed along Memcached node. See the following sections for details.

Install Memcached integration for Grafana Cloud

1. In your Grafana Cloud stack, click Connections in the left-hand menu.
2. Find Memcached and click its tile to open the integration.
3. Review the prerequisites in the Configuration Details tab and set up Grafana Agent to send Memcached metrics to your Grafana Cloud instance.
4. Click Install to add this integration’s pre-built dashboard and alerts to your Grafana Cloud instance, and you can start monitoring your Memcached setup.

Configuration snippets for Grafana Alloy

Simple mode

These snippets are configured to scrape a single Memcached instance running locally with default ports.

First, manually copy and append the following snippets into your alloy configuration file.

Integrations snippets

alloy Copy

prometheus.exporter.memcached "integrations_memcached_exporter" { }

discovery.relabel "integrations_memcached_exporter" {
	targets = prometheus.exporter.memcached.integrations_memcached_exporter.targets

	rule {
		target_label = "instance"
		replacement  = constants.hostname
	}

	rule {
		target_label = "job"
		replacement  = "integrations/memcached_exporter"
	}
}

prometheus.scrape "integrations_memcached_exporter" {
	targets    = discovery.relabel.integrations_memcached_exporter.output
	forward_to = [prometheus.remote_write.metrics_service.receiver]
	job_name   = "integrations/memcached_exporter"
}

Advanced mode

The following snippets provide examples to guide you through the configuration process.

To instruct Grafana Alloy to scrape your Memcached instances, manually copy and append the snippets to your alloy configuration file, then follow subsequent instructions.

Advanced integrations snippets

alloy Copy

prometheus.exporter.memcached "integrations_memcached_exporter" { }

discovery.relabel "integrations_memcached_exporter" {
	targets = prometheus.exporter.memcached.integrations_memcached_exporter.targets

	rule {
		target_label = "instance"
		replacement  = constants.hostname
	}

	rule {
		target_label = "job"
		replacement  = "integrations/memcached_exporter"
	}
}

prometheus.scrape "integrations_memcached_exporter" {
	targets    = discovery.relabel.integrations_memcached_exporter.output
	forward_to = [prometheus.remote_write.metrics_service.receiver]
	job_name   = "integrations/memcached_exporter"
}

This integrations uses the prometheus.exporter.memcached component to generate metrics from a Memcached instance.

For the full array of configuration options, refer to the prometheus.exporter.memcached component reference documentation.

This exporter must be linked with a discovery.relabel component to apply the necessary relabelings.

For each Memcached instance to be monitored you must create a pair of these components.

Configure the following properties within each discovery.relabel component:

• instance label: constants.hostname sets the instance label to your Grafana Alloy server hostname. If that is not suitable, change it to a value uniquely identifies this Memcached instance.

You can then scrape them by including each discovery.relabel under targets within the prometheus.scrape component.

Grafana Agent static configuration (deprecated)

The following section shows configuration for running Grafana Agent in static mode which is deprecated. You should use Grafana Alloy for all new deployments.

Instructions for Grafana Agent static

Dashboards

The Memcached integration installs the following dashboards in your Grafana Cloud instance to help monitor your system.

• Memcached Overview

Memcached overview

Alerts

The Memcached integration includes the following useful alerts:

Metrics

The most important metrics provided by the Memcached integration, which are used on the pre-built dashboard and Prometheus alerts, are as follows:

• memcached_commands_total
• memcached_connections_total
• memcached_current_bytes
• memcached_current_connections
• memcached_current_items
• memcached_items_evicted_total
• memcached_items_total
• memcached_max_connections
• memcached_read_bytes_total
• memcached_up
• memcached_uptime_seconds
• memcached_version
• memcached_written_bytes_total
• up

Changelog

md Copy

# 0.0.5 - September 2023

* New Filter Metrics option for configuring the Grafana Agent, which saves on metrics cost by dropping any metric not used by this integration. Beware that anything custom built using metrics that are not on the snippet will stop working.
* New hostname relabel option, which applies the instance name you write on the text box to the Grafana Agent configuration snippets, making it easier and less error prone to configure this mandatory label.

# 0.0.4 - December 2022

* Update mixin to latest version
* Add screenshot

# 0.0.3 - September 2022

* Update dashboard panels descriptions.

# 0.0.2 - October 2021

* Update mixin to latest version:
  - Update queries to use $__rate_interval

# 0.0.1 - November 2020

* Initial release

Cost

By connecting your Memcached instance to Grafana Cloud, you might incur charges. To view information on the number of active series that your Grafana Cloud account uses for metrics included in each Cloud tier, see Active series and dpm usage and Cloud tier pricing.