Metrics
ELI5 — The Vibe Check
Metrics are the numbers your app tracks about itself over time — requests per second, error rate, CPU usage, response time, active users. They're like vital signs for your app. You collect metrics continuously, graph them on dashboards, and set alerts when numbers go outside expected ranges.
Real Talk
Metrics are numeric time-series measurements that describe the behavior of a system. Types include counters (monotonically increasing), gauges (current value), and histograms (distributions). Metrics are scraped or pushed to systems like Prometheus, then visualized in Grafana or Datadog.
When You'll Hear This
"What do the metrics look like around the time of the incident?" / "Add a metric to track how many orders are placed per minute."
Related Terms
Alerting
Alerting is the part of monitoring that actually wakes people up when something goes wrong.
Dashboard
A monitoring Dashboard is a single screen with all your important metrics and graphs.
Grafana
Grafana is the visualization layer for all your monitoring data.
Monitoring
Monitoring is keeping a constant eye on your app while it runs — tracking whether it's up, how fast it responds, how many errors it throws, and how much me...
Observability
Observability is the ability to understand what's happening inside your system from the outside, using three types of data: metrics (numbers), logs (events...
Prometheus
Prometheus scrapes your services every 15 seconds asking 'how are you?' and stores the answers (metrics) as time series.