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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.

Syntax

meventcollect index=<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), all fields are treated as dimensions for the data point, except for the metric_name, prefix_field, and all internal fields.
Default: No default value

Optional arguments

split
Syntax: split=<bool>
Description: If set to false, the results must include a metric_name field for the name of the metric and a _value field for the numerical value of the metric. If set to true, then <field-list> must be specified.
Default: false
spool
Syntax: spool=<bool>
Description: If set to true, the metrics data file is written to the Splunk spool directory, $SPLUNK_HOME/var/spool/splunk, where the file is indexed automatically. If set to false, the file is written 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, any data point with that field missing is ignored. Otherwise, the field value is prefixed to the metric name.
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, the name of the file that is written 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 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.

Splitting

If each result contains only one metric_name field and one numeric _value field, then the result is a normalized metric data point. This result can be consumed directly and does not need to be split. Otherwise, each result is split into multiple metric data points based on the specified list of dimension fields.

field-list

If field-list is not specified, all fields are treated as dimensions for the data point, except for the prefix_field and internal fields (fields with an underscore '_' prefix). If field-list is specified, the list must appear at the end of the meventcollect command arguments. If field-list is specified, all fields are treated as metric values, except for the fields in field-list, the prefix-field, and internal fields.

The name of each metric value is the field name prefixed with the prefix_field value.

Effectively, one metric data point is returned for each qualifying field that contains a numerical value. If one search result contains multiple qualifying metric name/value pairs, the result is split into multiple metric data points.

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
Last modified on 22 October, 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, 7.2.2, 7.2.3, 7.2.4, 7.2.5, 7.2.6, 7.2.7, 7.2.8, 7.2.9, 7.2.10, 7.3.0, 7.3.1, 7.3.2, 7.3.3, 7.3.4, 7.3.5, 7.3.6, 7.3.7, 7.3.8, 7.3.9


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