Provide a way to insert random uuidv4 in alert definition.

[Toriniasty]

Proposal

Use case. Why is this important?
We have a 4 non clustered alartmanagers setup with custom written http webhook server.

We have also custom written clients(except prometheus) which submit payload via alertmanager api, but when they do we insert there uuidv4 to deduplicate the messages in our mysql instance by providing unique key on the column.

Where the setup works perfectly fine for the custom written clients we struggle a bit with alerts coming from Prometheus where we aren't able to do that since alertmanagers do not know about the message on other nodes.

Ideally we would like to see an option/variable which we would be able to put in alert definition which would be then automatically substituted by uuidv4.

[simonpasquier]

Not sure that I fully understand what you're looking for so let me try to rephrase your use case. When an alert is firing in Prometheus, you want to add a label with a random value that will remain constant as long as the alert is active. If the same alert gets resolved and fires again then you want the label value to be regenerated. Is that correct?

There's no way I know that it would work out of the box and your use case seems very specific to be relevant for the community. I would recommend that you extend your webhook receiver to manage the insertion of the UUID value instead.

Finally I would recommend you to use our user mailing list where you will reach out a broader audience.

[Toriniasty]

Not sure that I fully understand what you're looking for so let me try to rephrase your use case. When an alert is firing in Prometheus, you want to add a label with a random value that will remain constant as long as the alert is active. If the same alert gets resolved and fires again then you want the label value to be regenerated. Is that correct?
Yes

Problem with insertion on uuid on the webhook server is that it runs alongside each alertmanager so the uuid generated would be different on each of the alertmanagers and again alert wouldn't be deduplicated.

I spoke to someone on Freenode channel some time ago and told me that's currently not possible and asked me to open this feature request