This is a fork of Parca that replaces the FrostDB storage backend with a single-node, embedded DuckDB backend (
--storage-backend=duckdb): profiles live in one on-disk DuckDB file, queries prune by time window, and in-process--duckdb-retentionbounds the file's size — keeping single-node profiling fast and frugal where FrostDB's query cost scaled with total retained data (frostdb#1006).This fork's
mainis the project. It is not a branch staged for an upstream PR, and it does not track upstream unchanged — until upstream adopts a single-node backend, the work lives here as a fork.
- Container image:
ghcr.io/guettli/parca:duckdb, built frommainby.github/workflows/duckdb-image.yml.- Details:
docs/duckdb-image.md.
Continuous profiling for analysis of CPU, memory usage over time, and down to the line number. Saving infrastructure cost, improving performance, and increasing reliability.
-
eBPF Profiler: A single profiler, using eBPF, automatically discovering targets from Kubernetes or systemd across the entire infrastructure with very low overhead. Supports C, C++, Rust, Go, and more!
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Open Standards: Both producing pprof formatted profiles with the eBPF based profiler, and ingesting any pprof formatted profiles allowing for wide language adoption and interoperability with existing tooling.
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Optimized Storage & Querying: Efficiently storing profiling data while retaining raw data and allowing slicing and dicing of data through a label-based search. Aggregate profiling data infrastructure wide, view single profiles in time or compare on any dimension.
- Save Money: Many organizations have 20-30% of resources wasted with easily optimized code paths. The Parca Agent aims to lower the entry bar by requiring 0 instrumentation for the whole infrastructure. Deploy in your infrastructure and get started!
- Improve Performance: Using profiling data collected over time, Parca can with confidence and statistical significance determine hot paths to optimize. Additionally, it can show differences between any label dimension, such as deploys, versions, and regions.
- Understand Incidents: Profiling data provides unique insight and depth into what a process executed over time. Memory leaks, but also momentary spikes in CPU or I/O causing unexpected behavior, is traditionally difficult to troubleshoot are a breeze with continuous profiling.
If you have any feedback, please open a discussion in the GitHub Discussions of this project. We would love to learn what you think!
Check Parca's website for updated and in-depth installation guides and documentation!
You need to have Go, Node and Pnpm installed.
Clone the project
git clone https://github.com/parca-dev/parca.gitGo to the project directory
cd parcaBuild the UI and compile the Go binaries
make buildThe binary was compiled to bin/parca .
./bin/parca
Now Parca is running locally and its web UI is available on http://localhost:7070/.
By default, Parca is scraping it's own pprof endpoints and you should see profiles show up over time.
The scrape configuration can be changed in the parca.yaml in the root of the repository.
Flags:
Usage: parca [flags]
Flags:
-h, --help Show context-sensitive help.
--config-path="parca.yaml"
Path to config file.
--mode="all" Scraper only runs a scraper that sends to a
remote gRPC endpoint. All runs all components.
--http-address=":7070" Address to bind HTTP server to.
--http-read-timeout=5s Timeout duration for HTTP server to read
request body.
--http-write-timeout=1m Timeout duration for HTTP server to write
response body.
--port="" (DEPRECATED) Use http-address instead.
--log-level="info" Log level.
--log-format="logfmt" Configure if structured logging as JSON or as
logfmt
--otlp-address=STRING The endpoint to send OTLP traces to.
--otlp-exporter="grpc" The OTLP exporter to use.
--otlp-insecure If true, disables TLS for OTLP exporters (both
gRPC and HTTP).
--cors-allowed-origins=CORS-ALLOWED-ORIGINS,...
Allowed CORS origins.
--version Show application version.
--path-prefix="" Path prefix for the UI
--mutex-profile-fraction=0
Fraction of mutex profile samples to collect.
--block-profile-rate=0 Sample rate for block profile.
--enable-persistence Turn on persistent storage for the local
metastore (profile data is stored in
ClickHouse regardless).
--storage-path="data" Path to storage directory used for the local
metastore.
--symbolizer-demangle-mode="simple"
Mode to demangle C++ symbols. Default mode
is simplified: no parameters, no templates,
no return type
--symbolizer-external-addr-2-line-path=""
Path to addr2line utility, to be used for
symbolization instead of native implementation
--symbolizer-number-of-tries=3
Number of tries to attempt to symbolize an
unsybolized location
--debuginfo-cache-dir="/tmp"
Path to directory where debuginfo is cached.
--debuginfo-upload-max-size=1000000000
Maximum size of debuginfo upload in bytes.
--debuginfo-upload-max-duration=15m
Maximum duration of debuginfo upload.
--debuginfo-uploads-signed-url
Whether to use signed URLs for debuginfo
uploads.
--debuginfod-upstream-servers=debuginfod.elfutils.org,...
Upstream debuginfod servers. Defaults to
debuginfod.elfutils.org. It is an ordered
list of servers to try. Learn more at
https://sourceware.org/elfutils/Debuginfod.html
--debuginfod-http-request-timeout=5m
Timeout duration for HTTP request to upstream
debuginfod server. Defaults to 5m
--profile-share-server="api.pprof.me:443"
gRPC address to send share profile requests
to.
--store-address=STRING gRPC address to send profiles and symbols to.
--bearer-token=STRING Bearer token to authenticate with store
($PARCA_BEARER_TOKEN).
--bearer-token-file=STRING
File to read bearer token from to authenticate
with store.
--insecure Send gRPC requests via plaintext instead of
TLS.
--insecure-skip-verify Skip TLS certificate verification.
--external-label=KEY=VALUE;...
Label(s) to attach to all profiles in
scraper-only mode.
--grpc-headers=KEY=VALUE;...
Additional gRPC headers to send with each
request to the remote store (key=value pairs).
--storage-backend="clickhouse"
Storage backend for profile data.
--clickhouse-address="localhost:9000"
ClickHouse server address.
--clickhouse-database="parca"
ClickHouse database name.
--clickhouse-username="" ClickHouse username.
--clickhouse-password="" ClickHouse password
($PARCA_CLICKHOUSE_PASSWORD).
--clickhouse-table="stacktraces"
ClickHouse table name for profile data.
--clickhouse-secure Use TLS for ClickHouse connection.
--duckdb-path="" Filesystem path for the DuckDB database file.
Empty means an in-memory database (volatile).
--duckdb-table="stacktraces"
DuckDB table name for profile data.
--duckdb-retention=0 Delete profile rows older than this age (e.g.
168h for 7 days). 0 disables retention (keep
everything).
--duckdb-retention-interval=1h
How often the retention deletion runs.Parca was originally developed by Polar Signals. Read the announcement blog post: https://www.polarsignals.com/blog/posts/2021/10/08/introducing-parca-we-got-funded/
Check out our Contributing Guide to get started! It explains how compile Parca, run it with Tilt as container in Kubernetes and send a Pull Request.
Thanks goes to these wonderful people (emoji key):
This project follows the all-contributors specification. Contributions of any kind welcome!
We use Meticulous to automatically test our UI for any unwanted changes.
