List and chart log-based metrics

This document describes how to list and chart log-based metrics by using the Google Cloud console. For information about creating log-based metrics, see Configure counter metrics and Configure distribution metrics .

Before you begin

Ensure that your Identity and Access Management role includes the permissions required to create and view log-based metrics, and to create alerting policies. For details, see Permissions for log-based metrics .

List log-based metrics

To view a list of log-based metrics for your Google Cloud project, do the following:

1. In the Google Cloud console, go to the Log-based Metrics page:

   Go to Log-based Metrics

   If you use the search bar to find this page, then select the result whose subheading is Logging .

2. Select an existing Google Cloud project. The log-based metrics interface displays two lists of metric-types: System metricsand User-defined metrics.

   The User-defined metricspane of the log-based metrics interface has several features to help you manage the user-defined metrics in your Google Cloud project:

   • The user-defined metrics table includes Name, Description, Type, and Filtercolumns. These fields are specified when you create the metric.

   • The Filter user-defined metricspane lets you filter your metric list by text search or metric Name, Description, and Filter.

   • The user-defined metrics table includes columns for Previous month usageand Month-to-date usage (MTD). This usage data is useful, for example, if you want to determine which metrics ingest the most data or to estimate your bills .

   The more_vert More menu for each metric in your user-defined metrics pane contains additional features for managing your metrics:

   

   • View metric details: Shows you the metric's Name, Type, Description, Filter, Units, and Labels, if defined.
   • Edit metric: Lets you edit certain fields for the metric.
   • Disable metric: Lets you stops the metric from being calculated. You can re-enable a disabled metric from the same menu.
   • Delete metric: Lets you delete the metric.
   • View logs for metric: Takes you to the Logs Explorer and populates the metric's filter in the Query builderand runs the query.
   • View in Metrics Explorer: Lets you chart the metric.
   • Create alert from metric: Lets you configure notifications when a log-based metric matches criteria that you specify. For more information, see Alert on log-based metrics .

Chart log-based metrics

To create a chart of a log-based metric, do the following:

1. In the Google Cloud console, go to the Log-based Metrics page:

   Go to Log-based Metrics

   If you use the search bar to find this page, then select the result whose subheading is Logging .

2. Find the metric you want to view, and then select View in Metrics Explorerfrom the metric's more_vert More menu.

   Metrics Explorer opens and is preconfigured for you. However, you might want to change some chart settings.

   For example, the following screenshot shows a chart of the system metric with the name byte_count for a particular Google Cloud project:

   

   The Aggregationentry shows that each time series on the chart is a sum of the bytes written to a specific log. In the previous example, the project contains multiple logs, so the chart displays multiple time series.

   To view the data for a specific log, add a filter. For example, to view the byte_count metric for log entries written by BigQuery, click Add filter, select log, and then select the BigQuery entry. The chart now displays a single time series, which shows the total of the log bytes written by BigQuery. If you want to view the byte_count metric by the severity of the log entry, then change the second menu in the Aggregationentry from Noneto Severity. The following chart shows the byte_count metric displayed by severity level for logs written by BigQuery:

   

3. For distribution-valued log-based metrics, expand Line chartand select Heatmap chart.

   For more information about distribution-valued metrics, see Distribution metrics and Percentiles and distribution-valued metrics .

4. Optional: To save the chart for future reference, click Save chartin the toolbar, and then complete the dialog. You can save the chart to an existing dashboard or create a new dashboard.

What's next

• To create an alerting policy for a log-based metric, see Alert on log-based metrics .

• For more information about charting metric data, see these Monitoring resources:

  • Metrics Explorer
  • Creating charts