Metric names

All metric names must begin with a letter, an underscore, or a colon. No metric names may begin with lightstep..

Beyond the first character, metric names may contain any of the following characters:

  • Letters: a-z, A-Z
  • Numbers: 0-9
  • Symbols: . / _ - :

If metric names don’t follow these requirements, they will be rejected.

Metric kinds

Lightstep Observability supports gauges and two types of counters - deltas and cumulative, known as their kind. If when first ingested a metric name doesn’t match the kind recorded, it will be rejected and an error will be sent back to the client.

Lightstep supports:

  • Gauges
  • Deltas
  • Cumulative

If you want to change a metric’s kind, contact Customer Success at support@lightstep.com.

Attributes

There are currently no restrictions on attribute keys or values.