Thanos Query Frontend

Thanos Query Frontend is a service that can be deployed in front of Thanos Query to improve query performance by splitting large-range queries into smaller ones and also caching results. It is based on a similar component implemented by Cortex (https://github.com/cortexproject/cortex), the predecessor to Mimir. You can think of it as a pre-processor of queries, where the majority of actual work is still done by the downstream queries.

Query sharding and splitting

Presuming you run multiple top-level Thanos Query instances, you can put Query Frontend in front of them to share the load between them more efficiently than simply load balancing between the two of them with something such as Nginx. This can be accomplished through query splitting based on time ranges and/or vertical sharding.

Query splitting

By default, the --query-range.split-interval flag is set to split range queries on a 24h interval. This means that if you query sum(my_metric) over...