Labeled Metrics

Note

Labeled metrics are still an experimental feature. This document contains forward looking statements that anticipate future development of labeled metrics support. In particular, metric names and labels may be subject to change as we explore the space.

Warning

Enabling labeled metrics will likely cause a dramatic increase in the number of distinct metrics time series. Ensure your metrics pipeline is prepared.

Recent versions of Swift emit StatsD metrics with explicit application-defined labels, rather than relying on consumers knowing how to unpack the legacy label names. A variety of StatsD extension formats are available, many of which are parsed by statsd_exporter:

• librato

• influxdb

• dogstatsd

• graphite

See the proxy-server.conf-sample file for more information on configuring labeled metrics.

Labeled metrics are emitted in addition to legacy StatsD metrics. However, legacy StatsD metrics can be disabled by setting the statsd_emit_legacy option to False. This is not recommended until more legacy metrics have been supplemented with equivalent labeled metrics.

As various Swift middlewares, services and daemons are upgraded to emit labeled metrics, they will be documented in the relevant section of the All Statsd Metrics page.

Common Labels

Each labeled metric may have its own unique labels, but many labeled metrics will use some or all of a common set of labels. The common labels are documented here for information purposes, but the authoritative set of labels for each metric can be found in the sections of the All Statsd Metrics page.

Label Name	Value
type	The type of resource associated with the metric i.e. account, container or object.
account	The quoted account name associated with the metric.
container	The quoted container name associated with the metric.
policy	The storage policy index associated with the metric.
status	The status int of an HTTP response associated with the metric.
method	The method of an HTTP request associated with the metric.

Note

Note that metrics will not have labels that would likely have a very high cardinality of values, such as object names, as this is expected to be problematic for metrics collectors. Nevertheless, some operators may still need to drop labels such as container in order to keep metric cardinalities reasonable.