Ceilometer/Units

Ceilometer Units

This page has for goal to normalize the units used in Ceilometer.

Status: this page is currently a proposal and has not been approved yet.

1. Whenever a volume is to be measured, SI approved units and their approved symbols.
2. The selected division of the unit to be used should be the smallest possible to match the order of magnitude of the measurement and to avoid a much as possible
   • sub units (fractions, 0.XXX values) - Use Kb rathed Mb if your typical measurement is 10 or 100Kb
   • powers of ten (100000 values) - Use s instead of ms if the typical measurement is 1 or 10 sec.
3. When the measurement does not represent a volume, the unit description should always described WHAT is measured (ie: apples, disk, routers, floating IPs, etc)
4. If a previous counter exist measuring something similar, the same unit and division should be used as much as possible
5. Samples (aka meters or counters) should always document their units in Ceilometer (API and Documentation) and new sampling code should not be merged without the appropriate documentation.