Skip to main content

​
Metricsgeneration Processor

Status Available in: contrib Maintainers: @Aneurysm9, @crobert-1 Source: opentelemetry-collector-contrib

​
Supported Telemetry

Metrics

​
Overview

​
Description

The metrics generation processor (metricsgeneration) can be used to create new metrics using existing metrics following a given rule. This processor currently supports the following two rule types for creating a new metric.
  1. calculate: It can create a new metric from two existing metrics by applying one of the following arithmetic operations: add, subtract, multiply, divide, or percent. One use case is to calculate the pod.memory.utilization metric like the following equation- pod.memory.utilization = (pod.memory.usage.bytes / node.memory.limit)
  2. scale: It can create a new metric by scaling the value of an existing metric with a given constant number. One use case is to convert pod.memory.usage metric values from Megabytes to Bytes (multiply the existing metric’s value by 1,048,576)

​
calculate Rule Functionality

There are some specific behaviors of the calculate metric generation rule that users may want to be aware of:
  • The created metric will have the same type as the metric configured as metric1.
  • If no valid data points are calculated for the metric being created, it will not be created. This ensures the processor is not emitting new metrics that are empty.
  • Users may want to have metric calculations done on data points whose overlapping attributes match. To enable this behavior, please enable the feature gate metricsgeneration.MatchAttributes. This feature gate is disabled by default, meaning the value used for metric2 during the calculations is simply the first data point’s value. Refer to documentation for more information on how to enable and disable feature gates.

​
Configuration

Configuration is specified through a list of generation rules. Generation rules find the metrics which match the given metric names and apply the specified operation to those metrics. 
processors:
    # processor name: metricsgeneration
    metricsgeneration:

        # specify the metric generation rules
        rules:
              # Name of the new metric. This is a required field.
            - name: <new_metric_name>

              # Unit for the new metric being generated.
              unit: <new_metric_unit>

              # type describes how the new metric will be generated. It can be one of `calculate` or `scale`.  calculate generates a metric applying the given operation on two operand metrics. scale operates only on operand1 metric to generate the new metric.
              type: {calculate, scale}

              # This is a required field. This must be a gauge or sum metric.
              metric1: <first_operand_metric>

              # This field is required only if the type is "calculate". When required, this must be a gauge or sum metric.
              metric2: <second_operand_metric>

              # Operation specifies which arithmetic operation to apply. It must be one of the five supported operations.
              operation: {add, subtract, multiply, divide, percent}

​
Example Configurations

​
Create a new metric using two existing metrics


rules:
    - name: pod.cpu.utilized
      type: calculate
      metric1: pod.cpu.usage
      metric2: node.cpu.limit
      operation: divide

​
Create a new metric scaling the value of an existing metric

# create pod.memory.usage.bytes from pod.memory.usage.megabytes
rules:
    - name: pod.memory.usage.bytes
      unit: Bytes
      type: scale
      metric1: pod.memory.usage.megabytes
      operation: multiply
      scale_by: 1048576

​
Configuration

​
config.yaml (testdata)

metricsgeneration:
  rules:
    - name: new_metric
      unit: percent
      type: calculate
      metric1: metric1
      metric2: metric2
      operation: percent
    - name: new_metric
      unit: unit
      type: scale
      metric1: metric1
      scale_by: 1000
      operation: multiply

metricsgeneration/invalid_generation_type:
  rules:
    - name: new_metric
      type: invalid # invalid generation type
      metric1: metric1
      metric2: metric2
      operation: percent

metricsgeneration/invalid_operation:
  rules:
    - name: new_metric
      type: calculate
      metric1: metric1
      metric2: metric2
      operation: invalid # invalid operation type

metricsgeneration/missing_new_metric:
  rules:
    # missing name
    - type: calculate
      metric1: metric1
      metric2: metric2
      operation: percent

metricsgeneration/missing_operand1:
  rules:
    # missing operand1 metric
    - name: new_metric
      type: calculate
      metric2: metric2
      operation: percent

metricsgeneration/missing_operand2:
  rules:
    # missing operand2 metric
    - name: new_metric
      type: calculate
      metric1: metric1
      operation: percent

metricsgeneration/missing_scale_by:
  rules:
    # missing scale_by
    - name: new_metric
      type: scale
      metric1: metric1
      operation: multiply

metricsgeneration/missing_type:
  rules:
    # missing generation type
    - name: new_metric
      metric1: metric1
      metric2: metric2
      operation: percent

metricsgeneration/matching_metric1:
  rules:
    - name: new_metric
      type: scale
      metric1: new_metric
      operation: multiply
      scale_by: 100

metricsgeneration/matching_metric2:
  rules:
    - name: new_metric
      type: calculate
      metric1: original
      metric2: new_metric
      operation: multiply

​
config.yaml (testdata)

metricsgeneration/add_sum_sum:
  rules:
    - name: new_metric
      unit: percent
      type: calculate
      metric1: sum
      metric2: sum
      operation: add
metricsgeneration/add_gauge_gauge:
  rules:
    - name: new_metric
      unit: percent
      type: calculate
      metric1: gauge
      metric2: gauge
      operation: add
metricsgeneration/add_gauge_sum:
  rules:
    - name: new_metric
      unit: percent
      type: calculate
      metric1: gauge
      metric2: sum
      operation: add
metricsgeneration/add_sum_gauge:
  rules:
    - name: new_metric
      unit: percent
      type: calculate
      metric1: sum
      metric2: gauge
      operation: add
metricsgeneration/multiply_gauge_sum:
  rules:
    - name: new_metric
      unit: percent
      type: calculate
      metric1: gauge
      metric2: sum
      operation: multiply
metricsgeneration/multiply_sum_gauge:
  rules:
    - name: new_metric
      unit: percent
      type: calculate
      metric1: sum
      metric2: gauge
      operation: multiply
metricsgeneration/divide_gauge_sum:
  rules:
    - name: new_metric
      unit: percent
      type: calculate
      metric1: gauge
      metric2: sum
      operation: multiply
metricsgeneration/divide_sum_gauge:
  rules:
    - name: new_metric
      unit: percent
      type: calculate
      metric1: sum
      metric2: gauge
      operation: divide
metricsgeneration/subtract_gauge_sum:
  rules:
    - name: new_metric
      unit: percent
      type: calculate
      metric1: gauge
      metric2: sum
      operation: subtract
metricsgeneration/subtract_sum_gauge:
  rules:
    - name: new_metric
      unit: percent
      type: calculate
      metric1: sum
      metric2: gauge
      operation: subtract
metricsgeneration/percent_gauge_sum:
  rules:
    - name: new_metric
      unit: percent
      type: calculate
      metric1: gauge
      metric2: sum
      operation: percent
metricsgeneration/percent_sum_gauge:
  rules:
    - name: new_metric
      unit: percent
      type: calculate
      metric1: sum
      metric2: gauge
      operation: percent

​
config.yaml (testdata)

metricsgeneration/metric2_zero_add:
  rules:
    - name: new_metric
      metric1: capacity.total
      metric2: capacity.used
      operation: add
      type: calculate
metricsgeneration/metric2_zero_subtract:
  rules:
    - name: new_metric
      metric1: capacity.total
      metric2: capacity.used
      operation: subtract
      type: calculate
metricsgeneration/metric2_zero_multiply:
  rules:
    - name: new_metric
      metric1: capacity.total
      metric2: capacity.used
      operation: multiply
      type: calculate
metricsgeneration/metric2_zero_divide:
  rules:
    - name: new_metric
      metric1: capacity.total
      metric2: capacity.used
      operation: divide
      type: calculate
metricsgeneration/metric2_zero_percent:
  rules:
    - name: new_metric
      metric1: capacity.total
      metric2: capacity.used
      operation: percent
      type: calculate

​
config.yaml (testdata)

metricsgeneration/match_attributes_disabled:
  rules:
    - name: new_metric
      metric1: capacity.total
      metric2: capacity.used
      operation: add
      type: calculate
metricsgeneration/match_attributes_enabled:
  rules:
    - name: new_metric
      metric1: capacity.total
      metric2: capacity.used
      operation: add
      type: calculate

​
config.yaml (testdata)

metricsgeneration/sum_gauge_metric:
  rules:
    - name: system.filesystem.capacity
      unit: bytes
      type: calculate
      metric1: system.filesystem.usage
      metric2: system.filesystem.utilization
      operation: divide
metricsgeneration/sum_gauge_metric_match_attrs:
  rules:
    - name: system.filesystem.capacity
      unit: bytes
      type: calculate
      metric1: system.filesystem.usage
      metric2: system.filesystem.utilization
      operation: divide
Last generated: 2026-04-13