Semantic Conventions for OS Process Metrics
Status: Experimental
This document describes instruments and attributes for common OS process level metrics in OpenTelemetry. Also consider the general metric semantic conventions when creating instruments not explicitly defined in this document. OS process metrics are not related to the runtime environment of the program, and should take measurements from the operating system. For runtime environment metrics see semantic conventions for runtime environment metrics.
Metric Instruments
Process
Below is a table of Process metric instruments.
| Name | Instrument Type (*) | Unit | Description | Labels |
|---|---|---|---|---|
process.cpu.time | Counter | s | Total CPU seconds broken down by different states. | state, if specified, SHOULD be one of: system, user, wait. A process SHOULD be characterized either by data points with no state labels, or only data points with state labels. |
process.cpu.utilization | Gauge | 1 | Difference in process.cpu.time since the last measurement, divided by the elapsed time and number of CPUs available to the process. | state, if specified, SHOULD be one of: system, user, wait. A process SHOULD be characterized either by data points with no state labels, or only data points with state labels. |
process.memory.usage | UpDownCounter | By | The amount of physical memory in use. | |
process.memory.virtual | UpDownCounter | By | The amount of committed virtual memory. | |
process.disk.io | Counter | By | Disk bytes transferred. | direction SHOULD be one of: read, write |
process.network.io | Counter | By | Network bytes transferred. | direction SHOULD be one of: receive, transmit |
process.threads | UpDownCounter | {thread} | Process threads count. | |
process.open_file_descriptors | UpDownCounter | {count} | Number of file descriptors in use by the process. | |
process.context_switches | Counter | {count} | Number of times the process has been context switched. | type SHOULD be one of: involuntary, voluntary |
process.paging.faults | Counter | {fault} | Number of page faults the process has made. | type, if specified, SHOULD be one of: major (for major, or hard, page faults), minor (for minor, or soft, page faults). |
Attributes
Process metrics SHOULD be associated with a process resource whose attributes provide additional context about the process.