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 <cales...@gmail.com> 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 prometheus-users+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. > 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 prometheus-users+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/prometheus-users/CABbyFmqZXB3JFnjttOQUZm8zW3UdZQGvjkH5yeVEosjgYTW8GA%40mail.gmail.com.
