Table of Contents
Introduction
MetricFire automatically produces different statistical views on the data you send, providing fast views on your metrics at the most appropriate resolution for viewing on your dashboard using Hosted Graphite. This allows you append views to the end of your metric to visualize your data in different ways. Append a view to the end of your metric to visualize your data in different ways. A simple example of this would be data-view-metric:sum or test.testing:obvs
This article will briefly cover how you can get started with data views. To try this out yourself, sign up for a free trial!
Views
The different views we keep by default for all our Graphite metrics are:
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:avgAverage (default)
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:sumSum of data points received during the timeframe of the current graph resolution. This changes depending on the zoom level.Example: using :sum on a graph with data points drawn every 30 seconds will show the sum of all data points received in each 30-second period.
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:sumrateThe sum is divided by the number of seconds between data points, giving you a per-second rate.:sum and :sumrate are the most common views to use with Counter metrics.
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:sum30 :sum60 :sumNThis provides the sum received over a given number of seconds, calculated from the substrate. For example,”:sum30” provides the sum over 30 seconds.This is useful when you want a consistent metric sum regardless of the data resolution you are viewing.When drawing a graph at a wider timescale, there are more data points than available space to draw them. Using the ”:sumN” syntax lets you see an accurately scaled sum over a given number of seconds.
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:minMinimum value
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:maxMaximum value
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:obvsrateThe observations are divided by the number of seconds in the collection period, giving you a per second rate.
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:90pct :95pct :99pct etc...Want arbitrary percentile data? Just add the number after the colon followed by ‘pct’. It accepts values from 01 to 99. If you want the 100th percentile, you should use”:max”!
Comparison to StatsD
The Hosted Graphite views aren’t perfectly analogous to statsd, but it accomplishes much the same for general use.
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counting -> ‘:sum’ or ‘:obvs’
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rates -> ‘:sumrate’ or ‘:obvsrate’
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timers -> ‘:avg’ or ‘:min’ or ‘:max’
Data Views and Graphite Functions
Graphite functions act on one or more data series, transforming them into a new data series. When using a graphite function, it is important to note that:
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The data view specified in the query is not changed depending on the function. If you use the sumSeries() function, you will be summing the average values of each series unless you also use :sum in your query as well.
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The graph’s resolution can be changed by functions, but the resolution of the data series cannot. For example, summarize() allows you to group all the data points in a specified timeframe into one. Changing the zoom level of the graph won’t change the interval output by the summarize() function, but it may change the number of data points available to be summarized.
Using Data Views
At MetricFIre, we charge based on the number of metrics you send, not the data. FOr many customers, this allows them to keep their costs low, but for our users that have hundreds of thousands of metrics, this may create a challenge. By using data views, you get more insight into your metrics, giving you 9 times the value of your metric.
Conclusion
In this article, we covered Hosted Graphite's data views and how to use them. If you are looking for an affordable monitoring solution for large amounts of data, try MetricFire! We'd love to help you get started.
