Managing Metrics

A metric is a quantitative measure of a system property used to track health or performance. Wavefront supports metrics in Wavefront data format as well as other standard formats such as Graphite, OpenTSDB, and those generated by cloud-based services such as AWS.

Once metrics are ingested into Wavefront you can query and chart the data to help understand underlying patterns. You can create alerts to notify operators when anomalous values indicate a system malfunction.

If a metric is no longer reporting data, it is automatically removed from the Metrics browser and autocomplete dropdown after 4 weeks of inactivity.

You can manually hide metrics from the Metrics browser and in the autocomplete dropdown associated with queries. Manually hiding metrics does not permanently delete a particular metric or metric namespace from Wavefront.

To view and manage metrics, select Browse > Metrics.

Hiding Multiple Metrics

1. From the Metrics browser, locate the Hide Metrics button found in the top right corner of the page.

2. Click the Hide Metrics button. A dialog displays with a blank field.

   

3. In the blank field, type a complete metrics name (e.g. requests.latency) or a metric prefix (e.g. requests., cpu.loadavg.).

   • There is currently no autocomplete associated with this field, so you will need to know the entire metric name or metric prefix before entering it into this field.
   • The entered text is case sensitive.
   • Wildcards are not supported and are considered as part of the literal text string. This means that typing in requests.* hides a metric named requests.*, not metrics beginning with requests..

4. Press Enter or Return to add the metric or metric prefix to the temporary list.

   

   If there are any metrics or metric prefixes that were manually hidden previously, then they will appear in this list as well but are part of the permanent list of manually hidden metrics and metric prefixes.

5. Repeat the preceding two steps adding metrics and metric prefixes.
6. Click Save.

Hiding Single Metrics

1. In the Metrics browser, hover over a metric folder or metric name. A Hide Metrics button displays at the far right of that row on the list. If you are hovering over a metric name, the Hide Metrics button appears directly to the left of the Info button.

   

2. Click the Hide Metrics button. The metric or metric prefix is added to the hidden metrics list.

Viewing Manually Hidden Metrics

To view all manually hidden metrics and metric prefixes, click the Hide Metrics button. A list of metrics and metric prefixes that have been manually hidden displays.

This list displays only metrics and metric prefixes that were manually hidden. If a metric or metric prefix has not had a single data value reported in the last 4 weeks, by default Wavefront automatically hides the metric or metric prefix. Metrics and metric prefixes that are automatically hidden displayed in this list only if they were manually hidden before the automatic hide occurred (e.g. a metric becomes automatically hidden but was manually hidden by a user 5 weeks prior).

Unhiding Metrics

To unhide a metric or metric prefix:

1. Click the Hide Metrics button in the top right corner of the Metrics browser to view the list of manually hidden metrics and metric prefixes.
2. Click the Unhide button to the right of the metric or metric prefix to unhide.
3. Click Save. The selected metric and metric prefixes will display in the list of metrics in the Metrics browser, as well as the autocomplete dropdown associated with metric names when creating ts() queries. The selected metrics and metric prefixes only appear again in these cases if they have had at least 1 reported data value in the last 4 weeks. If this is not the case, then these metric/metric prefixes are considered obsolete metrics and Wavefront automatically hides them by default.