telegraf/docs/METRICS.md

Metrics

Telegraf metrics are the internal representation used to model data during processing. Metrics are closely based on InfluxDB's data model and contain four main components:

• Measurement Name: Description and namespace for the metric.
• Tags: Key/Value string pairs and usually used to identify the metric.
• Fields: Key/Value pairs that are typed and usually contain the metric data.
• Timestamp: Date and time associated with the fields.

This metric type exists only in memory and must be converted to a concrete representation in order to be transmitted or viewed. To acheive this we provide several output data formats sometimes referred to as serializers. Our default serializer converts to InfluxDB Line Protocol which provides a high performance and one-to-one direct mapping from Telegraf metrics.