Use Tags for Monitoring

Earlier, we created a Troubleshooting Metric Set on the credit.score.category tag, which allowed us to use Tag Spotlight with that tag and identify a pattern to explain why some users received a poor experience.

In this section of the workshop, we’ll explore a related concept: Monitoring MetricSets.

What are Monitoring MetricSets?

Monitoring MetricSets go beyond troubleshooting and allow us to use tags for alerting, dashboards and SLOs.

Create a Monitoring MetricSet

(note: your workshop instructor will do the following for you, but observe the steps)

Let’s navigate to Settings -> APM MetricSets, and click the edit button (i.e. the little pencil) beside the MetricSet for credit.score.category.

Check the box beside Also create Monitoring MetricSet then click Start Analysis

The credit.score.category tag appears again as a Pending MetricSet. After a few moments, a checkmark should appear. Click this checkmark to enable the Pending MetricSet.

Using Monitoring MetricSets

This mechanism creates a new dimension from the tag on a bunch of metrics that can be used to filter these metrics based on the values of that new dimension. Important: To differentiate between the original and the copy, the dots in the tag name are replaced by underscores for the new dimension. With that the metrics become a dimension named credit_score_category and not credit.score.category.

Next, let’s explore how we can use this Monitoring MetricSet.