# VictoriaMetrics

The `victoria-operator` Helm release converts Prometheus Operator
`ServiceMonitor` resources into owned `VMServiceScrape` resources. The
`VMAgent` selects converted scrapes labeled `release: prometheus-stack` in all
namespaces and writes them to the existing single-node VictoriaMetrics
instance. Changes to selected `ServiceMonitor` resources are reconciled
automatically; there is no copied Prometheus scrape-config blob to regenerate.

The agent drops targets for the Prometheus server service to avoid duplicating
its self-scrape. `scraper: victoria` identifies the samples ingested by this
VMAgent.

The VictoriaMetrics Operator chart and its CRDs are installed before the
Kubernetes manifests by the normal deploy workflow. On a cluster where the
operator CRDs are not installed yet, CI skips the server-side dry-run of the
`VMAgent` resource; the deploy installs the chart before applying that resource.