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Metric types

Counter

  • Cumulative metric
  • Value can reset to zero
  • Cannot decrease

Gauge

  • Single numerical value
  • Can go up and down
  • E.g., temperature, memory usage

Histogram

  • Sample observations
  • Histogram is cumulative
  • E.g., request durations, response sizes
  • An histogram generates 3 metrics
  • <metric_name>_sum
  • <metric_name>_count
  • <metric_name>_bucket: the number of measurement lower or equal to the value specified for each bucket. An +Inf bucket is automatically defined.
my_metric_bucket{le="1080"} # number of measurements lower or equal to 1080
my_metric_bucket{le="+Inf"} # total number of measurements (no upper bound)

my_metric_count # total number of measurements (always the same as my_metric_bucket{le="+Inf"})
my_metric_sum # sum of all measurements (the raw measurement value, not the highest fitted bucket)

Summary

  • Similar to to histogram