Tool A lightweight MCP Server for VictoriaMetrics – Easily write/query metrics, PromQL support, Prometheus format too!

Hey folks 👋

Just wanted to share a little tool we’ve been working on that might help those of you using VictoriaMetrics for metrics storage and looking for a clean way to handle writes, queries, and Prometheus format ingestion.

# 🎯 What is it?

It’s a lightweight MCP Server (Model Context Protocol) tailored for VictoriaMetrics. Think of it as an easy-to-integrate middle layer that gives you a REST-ish API for:

Writing data (with timestamps, labels, values)
Querying metrics (current values or over a time range)
Ingesting Prometheus exposition format
Fetching available labels and label values

Basically, if you’ve ever had to build a custom collector or metrics bridge, this tool could save you some time.

# 🔧 Features

✅ vm_data_write – Write metrics with full control (metric tags, values, timestamps)
✅ vm_prometheus_write – Send Prometheus exposition format data directly
✅ vm_query / vm_query_range – PromQL queries (instant or ranged)
✅ vm_labels, vm_label_values – For dynamic dashboards or label introspection
✅ Works great with local or remote VictoriaMetrics endpoints

# 🛠 Example (Write Metrics)

{
"metric": { "service": "auth", "env": "prod" },
"values": 100, 200,
"timestamps": 1713510000, 1713510060
}


# 🐳 Quick Start (Debug Mode)

npx u/modelcontextprotocol/inspector -e VMURL=https://127.0.0.1:8428 node src/index.js


# Config via JSON (if you're managing multiple MCP servers)

{
"mcpServers": {
"your-service": {
"command": "npx",
"args": ["-y", "@yincongcyincong/victoriametrics-mcp-server"],
"env": {
"VMURL": "https://127.0.0.1:8428",
"VMSELECTURL": "",
"VMINSERTURL": ""
}
}
}
}


# 🔍 Use Cases

Build your own metrics collection pipeline
Use it as a sidecar for custom apps to push metrics
Serve as a “translator” for Prometheus-style metrics into VictoriaMetrics
Internal dev observability dashboards

If you're already using VictoriaMetrics and want a clean way to interact with it without spinning up a full-scale collector, give this a try!

Would love to hear your feedback or ideas to improve it. Also curious — what tools do you guys use for custom metrics ingestion?

Let me know if you'd like a Docker version, TypeScript types, or Next.js API route integration examples — happy to share! 🙌



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Posting to Reddit from outside app

Is it possible to post to a sub reddit without entering the app or going to the site? I'm trying to post a new thread in a sub using an exe. The team member enters the information and the executable posts the inormation to the corresponding sub.

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Docker Blue Green Runner

[https://github.com/patternhelloworld/docker-blue-green-runner](https://github.com/patternhelloworld/docker-blue-green-runner)

1. **Achieve zero-downtime deployment using just your** `.env` **and** `Dockerfile`
* Docker-Blue-Green-Runner's [`run.sh`](https://run.sh) script is designed to simplify deployment: "With your `.env`, project, and a single Dockerfile, simply run 'bash run.sh'." This script covers the entire process from Dockerfile build to server deployment from scratch.
* This means you can easily migrate to another server with just the files mentioned above.
* In contrast, Traefik requires the creation and gradual adjustment of various configuration files, which requires your App's docker binary running.
2. **No unpredictable errors in reverse proxy and deployment : Implement safety measures to handle errors caused by your app or Nginx**
* If any error occurs in the app or router, `deployment is halted` to prevent any impact on the existing deployment
* Internal Integrity Check:
* Nginx Router Test Container
* External Integrity Check
* Rollback Procedures
* Additional Know-hows on Docker: Tips and best practices for optimizing your Docker workflow and deployment processes
* For example, Traefik offers powerful dynamic configuration and service discovery; however, certain errors, such as a failure to detect containers (due to issues like unrecognized certificates), can lead to frustrating 404 errors that are hard to trace through logs alone.
* [https://stackoverflow.com/questions/76660749/traefik-404-page-not-found-when-use-https](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/76660749/traefik-404-page-not-found-when-use-https)
* [https://community.traefik.io/t/getting-bad-gateway-404-page-when-supposed-to-route-to-container-port-8443/20398](https://community.traefik.io/t/getting-bad-gateway-404-page-when-supposed-to-route-to-container-port-8443/20398)
* Manipulates NGINX configuration files directly to ensure container accessibility.
3. **Track Blue-Green status and the Git SHA of your running container for easy monitoring.**
* Blue-Green deployment decision algorithm: scoring-based approach
* Run the command bash [`check-current-status.sh`](https://check-current-status.sh) (similar to `git status`) to view all relevant details
4. **Security**
* Refer to the [Security](https://github.com/patternhelloworld/docker-blue-green-runner#Security) section
5. **Production Deployment**
* Refer to the [Production Deployment](https://github.com/patternhelloworld/docker-blue-green-runner#production-deployment) section

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Overwhelming beginnings

Hi,
I've been working as a junior for 2 months (before that, I had a 3-month internship, but I didn’t do much heavy work — mostly fixing minor issues). Right now, I'm getting quite a few tasks involving PowerShell or AZ CLI scripts and creating my own pipelines. I'm learning everything from scratch, so I don't fully understand it yet. I try to study at home (I’ve learned Terraform, and now I’m diving into Azure DevOps, especially pipelines), but I feel overwhelmed. It frustrates me that in order to understand a task, I need to make detailed notes and use AI to get things done — although I don’t just copy and paste, I really try to understand how and why something works. I get that the best way is to search for solutions on your own and experiment, but since I’m still new and also pressed for time, I use AI.
Did you experience something similar at the beginning of your career? Did you also feel this kind of pressure or overwhelm?

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looking for a cheap server to practice my DevOps/cloud skills.

I'm looking for a cheap server to practice my DevOps/cloud skills. I'm a student and I'm looking for the cheapest possible options. Total dogshit of a sever charging a dollar a month kinda stuff. I used oracle before but they terminated my server without telling me anything. Any advice or wisdom from seniors and fellow students is welcome.

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Second DevOps Project

After my last post, and the constructive criticism I got in the comments 🙂 here, I decided not to give up.
I went looking for a decent project idea — and I found a fantastic one. Yep, this one!
I have to say, this project is really good for junior DevOps engineers. I learned a lot while digging into Terraform and Ansible docs.

I made it a point not to ask AI and instead went old-school: reading documentation, scrolling through Stack Overflow, etc.
And here I am.

So now all you have to do is check out this link (yep, this one too), and criticize me harshly — as much as you can.
Because honestly, that's the most efficient way to learn (in my opinion, of course 🙂).

Looking forward to your comments and your new ideas!
Thanks in advance 🙏

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Docker Volumes, Networks & Compose — A Code‑First, No‑Fluff Guide

I just dropped a follow‑up guide on [my first post](https://www.reddit.com/r/devops/comments/1jsxrcf/wrote_the_docker_guide_i_needed_back_when_i_was/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button). Based on your feedback, this one includes:

* **Real YAML snippets** you can copy‑paste
* **Useful commands** you’ll actually run
* **Further‑reading links** and **best practices**
* **More technical depth**, fewer tired metaphors
* **Still some humor**, because I write this for fun, not for a slide deck

In the post you’ll learn how to:

1. **Persist data** across container lifecycles with **Volumes**
2. **Connect containers** using **Docker Networks**
3. **Orchestrate multi‑container apps** with **Docker Compose**

Also: I wasted hours cursing a “broken database” before realizing I was trying to connect to `localhost` *inside* the container. 🤦‍♂️

👉 [https://open.substack.com/pub/marcosdedeu/p/you-containerized-your-app-now-its](https://open.substack.com/pub/marcosdedeu/p/you-containerized-your-app-now-its)

Questions, corrections, or roastings—bring ’em!

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Ways it can implement DevOps in my environment.

I'm a Windows/Azure Systems Administrator with 3.5 years of experience. I went from high school dropout → Help Desk → MSP Support/SysAdmin → now doing internal IT as a Systems Admin.

I currently work on a small team of four, including our manager. One teammate handles help desk and PC setups, another focuses on PowerShell automation (mostly around form submissions and workflows), and the manager oversees everything.

My day-to-day looks like this:
- Check for any network alerts
- Review and take action on reported phishing emails (release or ban)
- Investigate security incidents flagged by our SIEM
- Stay updated with Microsoft news/patches
- Handle the occasional escalated ticket

Right now, I’m kicking off a patching project. I’ve already built a dynamic inventory of vulnerable endpoints across our environment, and next up is writing PowerShell (still pretty new to it) to remediate those with MDM/PatchMyPC deployments.

tl;dr
I’m trying to pivot into either a DevOps/SRE or Security role—open to either path, but would love feedback on which might be a better fit based on my background. Just knocked out Sec+, and I’m diving into Go next.

My question is: how can I start incorporating DevOps practices into my current work so I can learn, improve efficiency, and add some solid talking points to my resume?

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Looking to hear what is the average daily rate for a Junior AWS Cloud Engineer Freelancer in Europe

A few recruitment companies have reached out to me for a contract role, but I am not so sure about the average daily rate (gross) for someone who has 1 year of experience with AWS.


Can someone help me provide me a ballpark

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Ansible: pure (only in its) pragmatism

A review of Ansible and its philosophy's merits and shortcomings.

https://andrejradovic.com/blog/ansible/

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What is a MongoDB Replica Set? A Beginner-Friendly Guide with Docker Compose Demo 🚀

Hey folks! 👋
I recently wrote a beginner-friendly blog post that breaks down MongoDB Replica Sets — what they are, why they matter, and how to set one up using Docker Compose.

If you're curious about high availability in MongoDB or want a hands-on demo to spin up a replica set locally, this guide has got you covered. Whether you're a dev, data engineer, or just exploring databases, I think you’ll find it helpful.

🔗 Read the full blog post here


(It includes step-by-step instructions, YAML config, and visuals.)

Happy to hear your thoughts, feedback, or answer any questions. Cheers! 🙌

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Following documentstion

I am following document.

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Best option for Deploying on NodeJS runtime

Need to get a NextJS app online, which is best to pay for:

Cant go cloudflare pages because no nodejs runtime support and I need nodejs runtime for some prisma stuff on the server & some other apis not available in edge runtime

Vercel (cant go free cuz org)
Rawdog AWS
sst.dev

Some other option ??



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DevOps engineer roadmap

Hello guys i hope y'all doing well i have a question regarding DevOps i want to be a devops engineer but I don't know exactly where to start i work as a noc Engineer most of my works is monitoring servers and enterprise applications and network devices i want to hope on DevOps from your experience where someone can start thank you in advance

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Quick question

I’m currently deploying a PHP project on DigitalOcean App Platform and using PHPMailer to send emails via smtp.gmail.com on port 587 (TLS). I wanted to ask if anyone here has experience with this setup:

Does DigitalOcean App Platform’s networking/firewall configuration allow outbound SMTP connections on port 587?
Or does it block these requests by default for security reasons?

I’ve seen some hosting providers restrict outbound SMTP ports to prevent spam abuse, so I’d appreciate any confirmation or suggestions on how to properly configure this if it’s allowed.

Thank you in advance.

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Suggestions for my Devops youtube channel

Hey folks, I have 10+ years exp in sys admin and devops. Started recently live sessions in zoom with few of interested (~10) folks and uploading recorded session to YouTube.
Recently covered intro to devops and Linux 101 basics. Networking, git, CICD, docker, cloud, monitoring, K8s and so on. And live debug sessions and RCA for famous outages incident notes. Planning to go for 6 months to 1 year in path. Once settled , planning to make proper video content and latest devops(tech) updates n so on.
Looking for suggestions if I am going in right path.Feedback is welcome.

https://youtube.com/@devopsdattu







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Deploying AWS Bedrock via Terraform

Deploying AWS Bedrock via Terraform isn’t exactly plug-and-play. When I first started building with Bedrock, I assumed it would be just like any other managed AWS service, pretty quick to deploy and easy to get up and running but that wasn’t quite the case.

Infrastructure as Code isn't just about managing VMs, databases or Kubernetes clusters anymore, it is also applicable for Gen AI. So here are few things that I observed and learnt during the setup process which hopefully benefits anyone else also looking to manage their Gen AI Infrastructure on AWS via Terraform.

1. Model Access isn’t automatic, even after setting up the correct set of IAM roles and policies with Terraform, calls to Bedrock models returned 403s. It took some digging to realize that model access needs to be manually requested in the AWS Console. There were no obvious error messages to guide you.

2. Not every model is available in every region. What worked in us-east-1 failed silently in us-west-2 because the model wasn’t supported there. This isn’t well-documented up front. I had to dig around AWS Bedrock service quotas to figure this out.

3. Bedrock doesn’t offer usage caps or rate limit alerts by default. So tracking usage via CloudWatch is essential to avoid surprises. I would recommend setting up alarms on the token usage of the foundational models to avoid unexpected charges.

If you want to learn more about provisioning and managing AWS Bedrock infra via Terraform then drop a comment or DM me and I will share link to my YouTube channel where I walk through it.



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Looking for advice to devops career in a start up company

Hi Everyone!

I am a senior CS graduate from school last year, and working in a Fin Start up company now. Although I am grateful to get the job with a chance to work with AWS and other kind of scripting thing, just want to get some advice to my next step and hopefully i could jump into a junior devops/platform like role in the next year.

Before my CS degree, i was a help desk in a international company, who force on support and coordinated infrastructure delivery. I quit my job and back to school for a proper CS degree. Since I feel like I can't just lie down and die here., and there is a big technical gap between us with other tech team, which create a cliff of internal mobility.

Back to now, i am working in a Fin Start up company who have history with less than a year as a support engineer. The good side of the company is they always lack of hands to work, there for I could shack into many places to learn and touch with real infrastructure stuff (like touch to AWS and CLI) and develop some script for helping my work (i.e. setup windows account and computer with powershell, prepare a .csv file and upload it to S3 bucket with python etc,). Although I am still cannot write a script right away, I start getting the concept about this.

Currently, I am doing my AWS SAA-C03 and hopefully I could completed this next month. However, I am not sure about my next step afterward. I like automation, but not a fan to cloud although I agree it is a useful technology and willing to learn about this. From my research on internet,

I should learn Terraform, Ansible, Docker, CI/CD (like git action), Grafana, properly AWS devops Associate also. But they looks a huge amount of content,...May i have some advice where should I start please? Or should I start with some course (like Udemy / KodeKloud /  https://github.com/100daysofdevops/100daysofdevops) to learn about the basic first?

Is there any suggest that I could try to explore more in my current workplace please?

Thank you!

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Do devs really value soft skills or is everyone just an 'antisocial genius'?

Good night, sub!

I'm a Computer Science student, and while I break my back learning frameworks and fixing a million bugs, I keep wondering: does the market actually expect us to be just coding machines?

I see tons of memes about devs who can’t communicate, meetings that turn into nightmares, and code reviews that feel like ego wars.

My existential doubts:

1. In practice, is a junior who asks a lot of questions seen as “incompetent”?
Or does asking clear questions help avoid massive screw-ups later?


2. Are code reviews technical discussions or just competitions to see who knows more?

I've heard stories of people taking “feedback” as personal attacks.



3. Does the myth of the “introverted dev who just codes” still exist?

Or are companies actually looking for people who can truly work in teams?




A scary example:

A friend of mine, who's an intern, was criticized for “talking too much” in a meeting (he just wanted to confirm the requirements before coding). That same day, another dev submitted super buggy code, but since it was done fast, no one complained.

Questions for those already in the field:

Startups vs. big companies: Which tends to value communication more?

Remote work: If you're not good at expressing yourself through text/calls, are you screwed?

Real advice: What can an intern/junior actually do to improve soft skills?


Note: If this sounds too “naive student,” feel free to say so. But I need honest answers before the market crushes me.

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Looking for an active community to upskill together with

Hi all, I am working as a DBA in a company in an internship plus am looking to get into DevOps whilst not loosing touch with my Backend Development. I am looking for communities that can help me grow as in guidance from seniors, peers to work on projects with, sharing job opportunities and other such things. Please help me find such communities thnx

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I used to spin up full-blown VMs for everything… until Docker changed my brain.

Back when I started out, deploying even the smallest app meant:
1. Launching a fresh VM
2. Installing dependencies manually
3. Praying I didn't break the prod box

I didn’t “get” containers. Why bother when VMs work just fine?

Then one day I saw a tiny Dockerfile build a Python app in seconds… and run it without touching the host. No more dependency hell. No more “it works on my machine”. Just build, run, repeat.

It clicked.

Since then, Docker became my go-to for local dev, testing, and deployment.

I recently wrote a beginner-friendly post as part of a 60Days60Blogs ReadList series I’m writing to simplify Docker & Kubernetes, one post at a time. This is ReadList 1 and What's inside:

1. What Virtual Machines actually are
2. How Containers changed the game
3. What Docker really does behind the scenes
4. The Dockerfile → Registry → Run flow (in human terms)

If you're early in your DevOps journey (or mentoring someone who is), I think this might help:

Read: Build, Ship, Run: Why Docker Changed the Game for Developers

What helped you when learning Docker for the first time?

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