From 590aff7ffc42d77c7c6feef76fe134976fb64c29 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Chris Mark Date: Mon, 2 Oct 2023 18:00:05 +0100 Subject: [PATCH] Document the difference between host and system metrics (#324) Signed-off-by: ChrsMark Co-authored-by: Joao Grassi Co-authored-by: Joao Grassi Co-authored-by: Josh Suereth --- docs/resource/host.md | 3 +++ docs/system/system-metrics.md | 6 ++++++ 2 files changed, 9 insertions(+) diff --git a/docs/resource/host.md b/docs/resource/host.md index 150755dc1..7469f8f40 100644 --- a/docs/resource/host.md +++ b/docs/resource/host.md @@ -6,6 +6,9 @@ **Description:** A host is defined as a computing instance. For example, physical servers, virtual machines, switches or disk array. +The `host.*` namespace SHOULD be exclusively used to capture resource attributes. +To report host metrics, the `system.*` namespace SHOULD be used. + | Attribute | Type | Description | Examples | Requirement Level | |---|---|---|---|---| diff --git a/docs/system/system-metrics.md b/docs/system/system-metrics.md index 745c9c25a..a06d5b966 100644 --- a/docs/system/system-metrics.md +++ b/docs/system/system-metrics.md @@ -11,6 +11,12 @@ metrics in OpenTelemetry. Consider the [general metric semantic conventions](/docs/general/metrics.md#general-metric-semantic-conventions) when creating instruments not explicitly defined in the specification. +The `system.*` namespace SHOULD be exclusively used to report hosts' metrics. +The `system.*` namespace SHOULD only be used when the metrics are collected from within the target system. (physical servers, virtual machines etc). +Metrics collected from technology-specific, well-defined APIs (e.g. Kubelet's API or container runtimes) +should be reported under their respective namespace (e.g. k8s.*, container.*). +Resource attributes related to a host, SHOULD be reported under the `host.*` namespace. +