Semantic Conventions for Kubernetes Metrics

Status: Experimental

K8s Metrics

This document describes instruments and attributes for common K8s level metrics in OpenTelemetry. These metrics are collected from technology-specific, well-defined APIs (e.g. Kubelet’s API).

Metrics in k8s. instruments SHOULD be attached to a K8s Resource and therefore inherit its attributes, like k8s.pod.name and k8s.pod.uid.

Metric: k8s.pod.cpu.time

This metric is recommended.

Name	Instrument Type	Unit (UCUM)	Description	Stability
k8s.pod.cpu.time	Counter	s	Total CPU time consumed [1]

[1]: Total CPU time consumed by the specific Pod on all available CPU cores

Metric: k8s.pod.cpu.usage

This metric is recommended.

Name	Instrument Type	Unit (UCUM)	Description	Stability
k8s.pod.cpu.usage	Gauge	{cpu}	Pod’s CPU usage, measured in cpus. Range from 0 to the number of allocatable CPUs [1]

[1]: CPU usage of the specific Pod on all available CPU cores, averaged over the sample window

Metric: k8s.pod.memory.usage

This metric is recommended.

Name	Instrument Type	Unit (UCUM)	Description	Stability
k8s.pod.memory.usage	Gauge	By	Memory usage of the Pod [1]

[1]: Total memory usage of the Pod

Metric: k8s.node.cpu.time

This metric is recommended.

Name	Instrument Type	Unit (UCUM)	Description	Stability
k8s.node.cpu.time	Counter	s	Total CPU time consumed [1]

[1]: Total CPU time consumed by the specific Node on all available CPU cores

Metric: k8s.node.cpu.usage

This metric is recommended.

Name	Instrument Type	Unit (UCUM)	Description	Stability
k8s.node.cpu.usage	Gauge	{cpu}	Node’s CPU usage, measured in cpus. Range from 0 to the number of allocatable CPUs [1]

[1]: CPU usage of the specific Node on all available CPU cores, averaged over the sample window

Metric: k8s.node.memory.usage

This metric is recommended.

Name	Instrument Type	Unit (UCUM)	Description	Stability
k8s.node.memory.usage	Gauge	By	Memory usage of the Node [1]

[1]: Total memory usage of the Node