Splunk® Enterprise

Metrics

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Splunk Enterprise version 7.1 is no longer supported as of October 31, 2020. See the Splunk Software Support Policy for details. For information about upgrading to a supported version, see How to upgrade Splunk Enterprise.
This documentation does not apply to the most recent version of Splunk® Enterprise. For documentation on the most recent version, go to the latest release.
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Get started with metrics

The Splunk platform gathers metrics from different sources and stores this data into a new type of index that is optimized for ingestion and retrieval of metrics.

The Splunk platform supports the following metrics-gathering tools natively:

Both of these tools are lightweight and easy to use, and they have a large community of support. If you want to start gathering performance metrics from your applications and systems, review these tools to determine whether either of them suits your environment.

If you prefer to use a different metrics-gathering tool, you can still use the Splunk platform to collect and analyze your data with manual configuration.

Metrics data format

Metrics data uses a specific format with the following fields.

Field Required Writable or Internal Description Example
metric_name X Writable The metric name. os.cpu.user
_time X Writable The timestamp of the metric in UNIX time notation. 2017-08-14 17:12:39.000
_value X Writable The numeric value of the metric. This field is a 64-bit floating point number, which supports precision between 15 and 17 decimal digits. 42.12345
<dimension 0> ...
<dimension n>
X Writable An arbitrary number of fields, indicating how metrics can be split. ip
_dims X Internal An auto-generated internal field that contains the names of all of the dimensions in the metric event. The purpose of this field is to return a list of unique dimension names in a metrics index. _dims::ip
metric_type Writable The type of metric. Only g (gauge) is supported. g
source Internal The source of the metrics data. udp:8125
host X Internal The origin host. A standard field in Splunk software. server007
index X Internal The metrics index name. A standard field in Splunk software. metricsindex
sourcetype X Internal The data structure of the metric. A standard field in Splunk software. statsd

Supported line protocols

Metrics in the Splunk platform natively supports the following metric line protocols:

  • Plain StatsD over UDP/TCP
  • The StatsD extension with dimensions over UDP/TCP
  • Collectd over HTTPS using HTTP Event Collector (HEC)

Getting metrics data in

For details about getting data in, see Get metrics in from StatsD and Get metrics in from collectd.

To support other line metric protocols, you can use custom transformations to get metrics data into Splunk platform from other tools. For details, see Get metrics from other clients.

Metrics source types

The Splunk platform includes the following pre-trained source types to support the most widely-supported line metric protocols:

Source type name Description
statsd Supports data using the metric line protocols for plain StatsD and the StatsD extension with dimensions.
collectd_http Supports data using the metric line protocol for collectd.
metrics_csv Supports data in CSV format. For usage details, see Get metrics in from other sources.

Metrics indexes

To store and analyze metrics data as efficiently as possible, metrics data is stored in a new type of index just for metrics. A metrics index can be used only for metrics data. You cannot convert an events index to a metrics index, or vice versa.

To learn more, see Create metrics indexes in the Managing Indexers and Clusters of Indexers manual.

For information about how metrics data is metered, see How Splunk Enterprise licensing works in the Admin Manual.

Default metrics indexes

You can assign default metrics indexes to user roles. See Add and edit roles with Splunk Web in Securing Splunk.

When you run a search with metrics commands such as mcatalog or mstats and you do not filter the search by a specific index, the search automatically searches the default indexes assigned to your role. If you run a metrics search that does not filter by a specific metrics index and you have no default metrics indexes assigned to your role, the metrics search runs over an empty dataset.

Search and CLI commands with metrics

To analyze data and enumerate items in a metrics index, use the mstats and mcatalog search commands. Other search commands that work with events do not work with metrics. For example, the delete command does not work with metrics. For more about searching a metrics index, see Search and monitor metrics.

Administrative CLI commands may not all work with metrics. You can use commands such as add index and list index with metrics when using the -datatype metric parameter. See Create metrics indexes in the Managing Indexers and Clusters of Indexers manual.

Last modified on 27 August, 2019
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This documentation applies to the following versions of Splunk® Enterprise: 7.1.0, 7.1.1, 7.1.2, 7.1.3, 7.1.4, 7.1.5, 7.1.6, 7.1.7, 7.1.8, 7.1.9, 7.1.10, 7.2.0, 7.2.1


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