Monasca/MetricNamingConventionProposal

Metric Names

Although metric names in the Monasca API can be any string the Monasca Agent uses several naming conventions as follows:

   All lowercase characters.
   '.' is used to hierarchially group. This is done for compatibility with Graphite as Graphite assumes a '.' as a delimiter.
   '_' is used to separate words in long names that are not meant to be hierarchical.

Metric Name Attribute Categories

Considering the five following attributes with a dot delimited metric name will allow future aggregation, filtering, parsing, and pattern matching.

1. proper_noun
2. noun
3. measurement (status, capacity, throughput, latency)
4. type (hits, kilobytes, bytes, count, percent, state)
5. qualifier (total, second, minute, hour, percent, current)

Common measurement categories and terms

Throughput

amount per time

Status

up, down, alive, dead, crashed, recovering, rebooting, shutting down

Capacity

full, percentage, empty

Latency

a time based measurement

proper_noun.noun.measurement_type.measurement_sub_type.measurement_

Existing Name	Suggested Name
apache.net.hits	apache.net.throughput.hits.total
apache.net.kbytes_sec	apache.net.throughput.kbytes.second
apache.net.requests_sec	apache.net.throughput.second.total
apache.net.total_kbytes	apache.net.throughput.kbytes.total
apache.performance.busy_worker_count	apache.busy_worker.capacity.count.total
apache.performance.cpu_load_perc	apache.cpu.capacity.perccent.total
apache.performance.idle_worker_count	apache.idle_worker.capacity.count.total
apache.status	apache.system.status.state.current
cpu.idle_perc	system.cpu.capacity.percent