Working with Metrics

Sysdig Monitor metrics are divided into two groups: default metrics (out-of-the-box metrics associated with the system, orchestrator, and network infrastructure), and custom metrics (JMX, StatsD, and multiple other integrated application metrics).

Sysdig automatically collects all types of metrics, and auto-labels them. Custom metrics can also have custom (user-defined) labels.

Sysdig Monitor draws metrics from multiple sources of data:

  • System call events are provided by our kernel instrumentation that allows the agent to extract process, file, and network related metrics.

  • Data such as CPU usage is collected on a per-process and per-container basis by scanning procfs and sysfs.

  • App checks, JMX, Prometheus, and statsd metrics are gathered by connecting to appropriate endpoints.

  • Container metadata, such as container names, is gathered from container runtimes such as Docker, CRI-O, and containerd.

  • Kubernetes metadata, such as pod name, is collected from the Kubernetes API server.

The Sysdig agent and Sysdig backend collaborate to aggregate this data and present the metrics, which can subsequently be segmented by various scopes, including process, container, and Kubernetes scopes such as pod and namespace.

Out-of-the box, when an agent is deployed on a host, Sysdig Monitor automatically begins collecting and reporting on a wide array of metrics. The sections below describe how those metrics are conceptualized within the system.

Topics in This Section
Types of Metrics

This topic introduces you to the types of metrics in Sysdig Monitor.

Using Labels

Sysdig Monitor performs data aggregation and filtering by using labels. This section helps you work with labels, groupings, scopes, and segments.

Data Aggregation

Sysdig Monitor allows you to adjust the aggregation settings when graphing or creating alerts for a metric, informing how Sysdig rolls up the available data samples to create the chart or evaluate the alert. This topic helps you familiarize yourself with aggregation concepts and settings and explains some mechanics Sysdig uses to allow for efficient query performance and data retention.

Metric Limits

Metric limits determine the amount of custom time series ingested by the Sysdig agent. While this is primarily a tool to help limit the total time series ingested for limiting cost exposure for each user, it does affect the total number of time series consumed and used in tracking metrics.

Manage Metric Scale

Sysdig provides several knobs for managing metric scale. This topic introduces you to the primary ways in which you could include/exclude metrics, should you encounter unwanted metrics limits.

Metrics Library

The Sysdig metrics dictionary lists all the metrics, both in Sysdig legacy and Prometheus-compatible notation, supported by the Sysdig product suite, as well as kube state and cloud provider metrics. The Metrics Dictionary is a living document and is updated as new metrics are added to the product.