RFD 463 The Oximeter Query Language

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2024-09-22 18:30:06

Telemetry and metric data forms an essential feature of the Oxide rack. Software and hardware components throughout the rack produce data, which is collected by a program called oximeter and stored in a ClickHouse database. This RFD describes the Oximeter Query Language (OxQL), a domain-specific language (DSL) for querying and processing the stored data. It is intended to be used as a building block for both Oxide-internal and customer-facing software.

The following content is (mostly) intended to be appropriate for end-user documentation. After publication, we expect that the majority of this RFD can be re-published as user documentation, which then become the document of record for OxQL. This RFD will not be updated further.

Oxide is in a unique position. Our product takes a holistic approach to rack-scale computing infrastructure, with hardware and software co-designed and sold to customers as a unit. We therefore have a unique opportunity to provide those customers deep insight into their infrastructure, with telemetry data sourced from the smallest hardware sensors all the way to the largest programs. While collecting data is a necessary first step, it’s critical that we also provide a powerful system with which to access this data. This is the purpose of OxQL.

OxQL should enable users to understand their Oxide deployments. In addition to extracting and exporting raw data, OxQL can process the data to provide insight and serve as a foundation for observability tools ranging from graphical dashboards to alerting mechanisms.