This is one of those tricky situations where there's not a strict correct answer.
For power-on-hours I would probably go with a gauge. * You don't really have a "perfect" monotonic counter here. * I would also include the serial number label as well, just for uniqueness identification sake. * Power-on-hours doesn't really have a lot of use as a counter. Do actually want to display a counter like `rate(power_on_hours[1h])`? On Fri, Jul 19, 2024 at 4:54 AM Christoph Anton Mitterer <[email protected]> wrote: > Hey. > > I'm writing an exporter for SmartRAID controllers. > > One of the metrics I'm collecting is the power-on-hours of physical > drives, where the value is the number of hours (which can obviously only > increase) and with labels that identify the drive by the controller number > and a drive name (which itself consist of the port/box/bay the drive is > connected to). > > Now I wonder whether this should be a counter or a gauge. > > As the value can only increase it sounds of course like a counter.... > ... however, a physical drive might be replaced (e.g. after it broke) and > the new drive would likely have the same drive name (because it's mounted > at the same place), yet the power-on-hours would of course be lower for a > new drive. > > So question is, especially with PromQL functions like increase() and > rate(), which detect counter resets, whether this should be a counter or a > gauge. > > Or whether the proper approach would be counter + another label which > makes the time series unique (like drive serial number), though I'd rather > no go that approach (because the serial is already stored in an info > metric, and I don't wanna store it twice). > > Thanks, > Chris. > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Prometheus Users" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to [email protected]. > To view this discussion on the web visit > https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/prometheus-users/10c70d6b-8854-4a3f-8f82-0e663d0ebbcan%40googlegroups.com > <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/prometheus-users/10c70d6b-8854-4a3f-8f82-0e663d0ebbcan%40googlegroups.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer> > . > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Prometheus Users" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/prometheus-users/CABbyFmqZXB3JFnjttOQUZm8zW3UdZQGvjkH5yeVEosjgYTW8GA%40mail.gmail.com.
