meventcollect

Description

Converts events generated by streaming search commands into metric data points and inserts the data into a metric index on the indexers.

You can use the meventcollect command only if your role has the run_mcollect capability. See Define roles on the Splunk platform with capabilities in Securing Splunk Enterprise.

This command is considered risky because, if used incorrectly, it can pose a security risk or potentially lose data when it runs. As a result, this command triggers SPL safeguards. See SPL safeguards for risky commands in Securing the Splunk Platform.

Syntax

The required syntax is in bold.

| meventcollect index=<string>

[ file=<string> ]

[ split=<bool> ]

[ spool=<bool> ]

[ prefix_field=<string> ]

[ host=<string> ]

[ source=<string> ]

[ sourcetype=<string> ]

[ <field-list> ]

Required arguments

index

Syntax: index=<string>

Description: Name of the metric index where the collected metric data is added.

field-list

Syntax: <field>, ...

Description: A list of dimension fields. Required if split=true. Optional if split=false. If unspecified (which implies that split=false), meventcollect treats all fields as dimensions for the data point, except for the metric_name, prefix_field, and all internal fields.

Default: No default value

Optional arguments

file

Syntax: file=<string>

Description: The file name where you want the collected metric data to be written. Only applicable when spool=false. You can use a timestamp or a random number for the file name by specifying either file=$timestamp$ or file=$random$.

Default: $random$_metrics.csv

split

Syntax: split=<bool>

Description: Determines how meventcollect identifies the measures in an event. See How to use the split argument.

Default: false

spool

Syntax: spool=<bool>

Description: If set to true, meventcollect writes the metrics data file to the Splunk spool directory, $SPLUNK_HOME/var/spool/splunk, where the file is indexed automatically. If set to false, meventcollect writes the file to the $SPLUNK_HOME/var/run/splunk directory. The file remains in this directory unless further automation or administration is done.

Default: true

prefix_field

Syntax: prefix_field=<string>

Description: Only applicable when split=true. If specified, meventcollect ignores any data point with that field missing. Otherwise, meventcollect prefixes the field value to the metric name. See Set a prefix field.

Default: No default value

host

Syntax: host=<string>

Description: The name of the host that you want to specify for the collected metrics data. Only applicable when spool=true.

Default: No default value

source

Syntax: source=<string>

Description: The name of the source that you want to specify for the collected metrics data.

Default: If the search is scheduled, the name of the search. If the search is ad-hoc, meventcollect writes the name of the file to the var/spool/splunk directory containing the search results.

sourcetype

Syntax: sourcetype=<string>

Description: The name of the source type that you want to specify for the collected metrics data.

Default: metrics_csv

Do not change this setting without assistance from Splunk Professional Services or Splunk Support. Changing the source type requires a change to the props.conf file.

Usage

You use the meventcollect command to convert streaming events into metric data to be stored in a metric index on the indexers. The metrics data uses a specific format for the metrics fields. See Metrics data format in Metrics.

Only streaming commands can precede the meventcollect command so that results can be ingested on the indexers. If you would like to run a search that uses transforming commands to generate metric data points, use mcollect instead of meventcollect.

The meventcollect command causes new data to be written to a metric index for every run of the search. In addition, if you run an meventcollect search over large amounts of data, it potentially can overwhelm indexers and indexer clusters that do not have a significant amount of capacity.

All metrics search commands are case sensitive. This means, for example, that meventcollect treats as the following as three distinct values of metric_name: cap.gear, CAP.GEAR, and Cap.Gear.

The Splunk platform cannot index metric data points that contain metric_name fields which are empty or composed entirely of white spaces.

How to use the split argument

The split argument determines how meventcollect identifies the measurement fields in your search. It defaults to false.

When split=false, your search needs to explicitly identify its measurement fields. If necessary it can use rename or eval conversions to do this.

• If you have single-metric events, your meventcollect search must produce results with a metric_name field that provides the name of the measure, and a _value field that provides the measure's numeric value.
• If you have multiple-metric events, your meventcollect search must produce results that follow this syntax: metric_name:<metric_name>=<numeric_value>. Each of these fields will be treated as a measurement. meventcollecttreats the remaining fields as dimensions.

When you set split=true, you use field-list to identify the dimensions in your search. meventcollect converts any field that is not in the field-list into a measurement. The only exceptions are internal fields beginning with an underscore and the prefix_field, if you have set one.

When you set split=allnums, meventcollect treats all numeric fields as metric measures and all non-numeric fields as dimensions. You can optionally use field-list to declare that meventcollect should treat certain numeric fields in the events as dimensions.

Set a prefix field

Use the prefix_field argument to apply a prefix to the metric fields in your event data.

For example, if you have the following data:

type=cpu usage=0.78 idle=0.22

You have two metric fields, usage and idle.

Say you include the following in an mcatalog search of that data:

...split=true prefix_field=type...

Because you have set split = true the Splunk software automatically converts those fields into measures, because they are not otherwise identified in a <field-list>. Then it applies the value of the specified prefix_field as a prefix to the metric field names. In this case, because you have specified the type field as the prefix field, its value, cpu, becomes the metric name prefix. The results look like this:

metric_name:cpu.usage	metric_name:cpu.idle
0.78	0.22

Examples

1: Collect metrics.log data into a metrics index

The following example shows you how to collect metrics log data into a metric index called 'my_metric_index'.

index=_internal source=*/metrics.log | eval prefix = group + "." + name | meventcollect index=my_metric_index split=true prefix_field=prefix name group

See also

Commands

collect

mcollect