rate Metrics Operator

The rate operator calculates the per-second rate of change between consecutive data points. It divides the difference in values of consecutive data points by the difference in their timestamps (in milliseconds) and then multiplies the result by 1000 (to scale up the quantity from a per-millisecond rate to a per-second rate).

The rate operator also assigns the value of the metric tag to be rate($metric) and the value of the unit metadata field to be $unit/second (for example, 1/second).

rate syntax

metric query | rate [increasing | decreasing]

If you use the increasing option, the operator will consider only those pairs of consecutive points where the second point in the pair is greater than the first point. Similarly, if you use the the decreasing option, the operator will consider only those pairs of consecutive points where the second point in the pair is less than the first point. This functionality is useful when you are calculating the rate of change of a counter over time.

rate examples

This query calculates the increase or decrease per second in the Net_InBytes metric from one collected data point to the next. 

metric=Net_InBytes Interface=eth0 | rate