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Monitoring filters

This guide describes how to configure filters when you use the Monitoring API. You use filters to specify monitored resources, metric types, group definitions, and time series. You can also use a filter to configure an alerting policy that monitors processes running on your systems. For information about those filters, see Process-health filters.

Before you begin

If you aren't familiar with metrics, time series, and monitored resources, see Metrics, time series, and resources.

If you aren't familiar with labels, see Labels for an introduction.

Using filters

You can use filters in the Monitoring API to do the following:

Filter selectors

A filter consists of at least one selector, which is a filter keyword. The following examples illustrate the different selectors:

The following table shows which selectors are permitted in filters based on the Monitoring API call:

Filter purpose project selector group selector resource selector metric selector
Define groups yes yes*
List group members yes yes
List time series yes yes yes yes †
List metric descriptors yes yes
List monitored resource descriptors yes
* The resource selector has additional options when used for defining group membership.
† When listing time series, you must specify exactly one metric type.

The following sections show examples of typical uses of monitoring filters. See Filter syntax for a complete discussion of the available filter objects and operators.

Retrieving time series data

Method: projects.timeSeries.list
Filter objects: project, group.id, resource.type, resource.labels.[KEY], metric.type, metric.labels.[KEY]

A time series is a list of time-stamped data points of a metric type from a specific monitored resource. For details, see The metric model. The metric type is specified by a metric descriptor, and the monitored resource is specified by a monitored-resource descriptor.

The filter specified to the timeSeries.list method must include a metric selector, and that selector must specify exactly one metric type:

Defining group membership

Method: projects.groups.create
Filter objects: project, resource.type, resource.labels.key, metadata.system_labels.[KEY], metadata.user_labels.[KEY]

A group can contain any number of resources, as specified by a filter. Group membership is dynamic; more or fewer resources might match the filter every time the filter is evaluated. The name parameter in the Group object specifies the group and the scoping project of a metrics scope. If the project selector is used in the filter, then it must specify a project whose metrics are visible to the scoping project.

For example, to create a group that includes only Compute Engine virtual machine (VM) instances in Europe, use the following filter: 

resource.type = "gce_instance" AND resource.labels.zone = starts_with("europe-")

For information about API methods that you can use to delete, update, or list groups, see projects.groups API reference page.

Listing group members

Method: projects.groups.members.list
Filter objects: project, resource.type, resource.labels.[KEY]

The name parameter specifies a scoping project of a metrics scope and a group defined in that project. If you don't specify a filter, then projects.groups.members.list returns a list of the membership of the group.

You can use a filter to limit which group members you retrieve. If the filter includes a project selector, then the selectors value must specify a project whose metrics are visible to the scoping project. If an invalid value is specified, then the project selector is ignored.

For example, suppose that you create a group that includes all resources whose name contains test. To list only the group members that are Pub/Sub topics, use the following filter:

resource.type = "pubsub_topic"

Listing metric descriptors

Method: projects.metricDescriptors.list
Filter objects: project, metric.type

Use a filter to limit which metric descriptors you retrieve.

For example, to return only the Compute Engine metric descriptors, use the following filter: 

metric.type = starts_with("compute.googleapis.com")

See Metrics list for a complete list of the available metric types. For an overview of how metrics are named, see Metric naming conventions.

Listing monitored resource descriptors

Method: projects.monitoredResourceDescriptors.list
Filter objects: resource.type

Use a filter to limit which monitored resource descriptors you retrieve.

For example, to retrieve only the Pub/Sub monitored resource descriptors, use the following filter: 

resource.type = starts_with("pubsub")

See Monitored resource list for a complete list of the monitored resource types defined by Monitoring.

Examples

In the filtering examples, we use the following metric descriptor, monitored resource descriptor, and virtual machine instance, simplified for illustration:

    # Metric descriptor:
    { "name": "projects/my-project-id/metricDescriptors/compute.googleapis.com%2Finstance%2Fdisk%2Fread_bytes_count"
      "type": "compute.googleapis.com/instance/disk/read_bytes_count",
      "labels": [ { "key": "device_name",
                    "description": "The name of the disk device." } ] }

    # Monitored resource descriptor:
    {  "name": "monitoredResourceDescriptors/gce_instance"
       "type": "gce_instance",
       "labels": [
         { "key": "instance_id",
           "description": "The instance ID provide by Google Compute Engine." },
         { "key": "zone",
           "description": "The Google Cloud Platform zone hosting the instance."
         } ] }

    # Resource descriptor for a virtual machine instance.
    { "type": "gce_instance",
      "instance_id": "1472038649266883453",
      "zone": "us-east-1b",
      "disks": [ "log_partition" ],
      "machine_type": "n1-standard-2",
      "tags": { "environment": "bleeding-edge",
                "role": "frobulator" },
      "project_id": "my-project-id" }

Metric retrieval examples

To request the disk-read bandwidth usage for all instances and all devices, define a filter as follows. This filter returns, for each instance, a separate time series reporting the read bandwidth for each device:

metric.type = "compute.googleapis.com/instance/disk/read_bytes_count"

To refine the request to query for the read bandwidth for only the disk device known as "log_partition" on each instance, define the filter as follows. This filter returns, for each instance, at most one time series, depending on whether a device of that name exists on that instance:

metric.type = "compute.googleapis.com/instance/disk/read_bytes_count" AND
metric.labels.device_name = "log_partition"

To restrict the request to a single instance, specify that instance:

resource.type = "gce_instance" AND
resource.labels.instance_id = "1472038649266883453" AND
metric.type = "compute.googleapis.com/instance/disk/read_bytes_count" AND
metric.labels.device_name = "log_partition"

Filtering with groups

The following examples illustrate the use of the group selector in filters to restrict monitored resources to those in a specific group. See Resource selector for group definitions for information on the selectors used to define group membership.

{ "name": "projects/my-test-project/groups/024681012",
  "display_name": "My Redis Cluster",
  "filter": "metadata.user_labels.role=redis" }

In a call to the projects.timeSeries.list method, the following filter requests the disk-read bandwidth usage for all Compute Engine instances in a particular group. The group must be defined in the scoping project of a metrics scope specified in the method's name parameter:

resource.type = "gce_instance" AND
group.id = "024681012" AND
metric.type = "compute.googleapis.com/instance/disk/read_bytes_count"

Reference: filter syntax

For an overview of filters with examples, see Using filters.

A monitoring filter is a string consisting of up to four types of selectors:

    <monitoring_filter> ::=  <project_selector> AND
                             <group_selector> AND
                             <resource_selector> AND
                             <metric_selector>

The filter matches an item if all of the included selectors match the item. As described in the following sections, some selectors can have multiple comparisons joined by AND or OR. The order of the selectors in the filter doesn't matter, but comparisons for different selectors must not be intermingled.

Depending on the filter's purpose, certain selectors might be required, optional, or prohibited. For example, the filter used to list time series must contain a metric selector. However, the filter that defines the resources in a group can't contain a metric selector, because groups don't contain metric types or time series.

Comparisons

Filters and their selectors are built from comparisons. Each comparison has the following form:

  • [OBJECT]: selects a value to be tested; one of the following:

    project
group.id
metric.type
metric.labels.[KEY]
resource.type
resource.labels.[KEY]
metadata.system_labels.[KEY]
metadata.user_labels.[KEYSTRING]

    [KEY] is a name, such as zone or instance_id.

    [KEYSTRING] can be name, but if it contains special characters, then it must be quoted with quotation marks (").

  • [OPERATOR]: a comparison operator; one of the following:

    =            # equality (case-sensitive)
> < >= <=    # numeric ordering
!=           # not equal
:            # "has" substring match and test for key (case-sensitive)

    • [VALUE]: a literal value or a built-in function call; one of the following:

    <string>     # "a Unicode string". Don't use apostrophes (`'`) to quote strings.
<bool>       # true or false
<number>     # 0, -2, 123456, 3.14156
<function>   # operators on the right side of '=' or '!=':
             #   starts_with(<string>)
             #   ends_with(<string>)
             #   has_substring(<string> [, ignore_case=false])
             #   one_of(<string>,...,<string>) for up to 100 strings
             #   monitoring.regex.full_match(<RE2-string>)

    Except when used in the timeSeries.list method, the has_substring filter takes an optional second argument, which specifies whether the match ignores case or not. The default value is false, so the default match is case-sensitive:

    When used in the timeSeries.list method, only the has_substring(<string>) form is supported.

    The monitoring.regex.full_match filter takes a regular-expression string in RE2 syntax.

    You can use the following operators to group or modify comparisons. OR has higher precedence than AND. The operators must be written in upper case:

    (...)        # grouping comparisons
AND          # conjunction (optional but recommended)
OR           # disjunction

    The AND operator can be omitted between operators, but it is clearer and less error-prone to include it.

    The comparison x = one_of("a", "b", "c") is equivalent to the following:

    (x = "a" OR x = "b" OR x = "c")
    Only in group definitions, you can use the unary negation operator, NOT, before a comparison, but not with an exists operator (:) or before a parenthesized expression: 
    NOT          # negates the following comparison

    Filter selectors

    Use selectors to limit the filter selections to certain items. In the following sections, braces are used to show repetition. For example, the notation <x> {OR <y>} means that you can write any of the following:

    <x>
<x> OR <y>
<x> OR <y> OR <y>
<x> OR <y> OR <y> OR <y>
...

    Project selector

    A project selector limits the filter selection to items belonging to a single project or to any one of a set of projects. Each project can be specified by its ID or its number:

    <project_selector> ::= project '=' (<number> | <string>) {OR project '=' (<number> | <string>)}

    If your project selector has more than a single comparison, enclose the entire selector in parentheses for better readability. For example:

    (project=12345 OR project="my-project-id") AND resource.type="gce_instance"

    Group selector

    A group selector limits the filter selection to items belonging to a single group:

    <group_selector> ::= group.id '=' <string>

    For example, the following filter can be used to retrieve a time seriess from each of the VM instances in a group:

    group.id = 12345 AND
resource.type = "gce_instance" AND
metric.type = "compute.googleapis.com/instance/disk/read_bytes_count"

    The group selector is permitted only in filters passed to the projects.timeSeries.list method. In addition, group selection requires aligned data; that is, the projects.timeSeries.list call must include values for the fields perSeriesAligner and alignmentPeriod. This is because group membership is itself a kind of time series that must be joined with the metric data, and supplying alignment parameters gives you control over how that join happens. For more information on alignment parameters, see Aggregating data.

    Resource selector

    A resource selector limits the filter selection to resources—or items associated with resources—that have a specific resource type or label values:

    <resource_selector> ::= <resource_type_expression>
                      | <resource_label_expression>
                      | <resource_type_expression> AND <resource_label_expression>

<resource_type_expression> ::= resource.type '=' <string>
                             | resource.type ':' <string>
                             | resource.type '=' starts_with '(' <string>')'
                             | resource.type '=' ends_with '(' <string> ')'

<r_label_comparison> ::= resource.labels.[KEY] '=' (<string> | <bool>)
                       | resource.labels.[KEY] ':' <string>
                       | resource.labels.[KEY] '=' (starts_with | ends_with) '(' <string> ')'
                       | resource.labels.[KEY] ('=' | '>' | '<' | '>=' | '<=') <number>

<resource_label_expression> ::= <r_label_comparison> {AND <r_label_comparison>}
                              | <r_label_comparison> {OR <r_label_comparison>}

    If you use more than one <r_label_comparison> in your selector, then enclose them all in parentheses for better readability. For example, the following filter could be used to define a group that includes all Compute Engine VM instances in the USA and Europe.

    resource.type = "gce_instance" AND
(resource.labels.zone = starts_with("us-") OR resource.labels.zone = starts_with("europe-"))

    Resource selector for group definitions

    Resource selectors used to define group membership use extensions to the <resource_selector> syntax:

    For example, one of the platform resource metadata keys for VM instances is spot_instance. The following filter selector chooses instances that are spot instances:

    resource.type = "gce_instance" AND metadata.system_labels.spot_instance = true

    Metric selector

    A metric selector specifies certain metrics or metric descriptors by limiting the metric type and metric labels. When used with the projects.timeSeries.list method, the metric selector must specify a single metric type:

    <metric_selector> ::= <metric_name_expression> [AND <metric_label_expression>]

<metric_name_expression> ::= metric.type '=' <string>
                           | metric.type ':' <string>
                           | metric.type '=' starts_with '(' <string> ')'
                           | metric.type '=' ends_with '(' <string> ')'

<metric_label_comparison> ::= metric.labels.[KEY] '=' <string> | <bool>
                            | metric.labels.[KEY] ':' <string>
                            | metric.labels.[KEY] '=' starts_with '(' <string> ')'
                            | metric.labels.[KEY] '=' ends_with '(' <string> ')'
                            | metric.labels.[KEY] ('=' | '>' | '<' | '>=' | '<=') <number>

<metric_label_expression> ::= <metric_label_comparison> {[AND] <metric_label_comparison>}
                            | <metric_label_comparison> {OR <metric_label_comparison>}

    For example, the following filter could be used to retrieve a time series for a specific database instance:

    metric.type = "cloudsql.googleapis.com/database/state" AND
(metric.labels.resource_type = "instance" AND
 metric.labels.resource_id = "abc-123456")