[Page feedback]: Clarify Prom exporter metric names and add them to a new naming section

[joshdaws0n]

URL

https://opentelemetry.io/docs/collector/internal-telemetry/

Description

otelcol_exporter_send_failed_log_records
otelcol_exporter_send_failed_metric_points
otelcol_exporter_send_failed_spans

Are all detailed in the 'base level metrics' table: https://opentelemetry.io/docs/collector/internal-telemetry/#basic-level-metrics

None of those metrics seem to exist with those names - I'm seeing them as all being appended with "_total". Happy to be corrected but ideally could be updated if not!

Josh

[tiffany76]

Thanks for reporting, @joshdaws0n! @open-telemetry/collector-approvers, PTAL.

[jade-guiton-dd]

I believe these are the correct metric names on the OpenTelemetry side.

However, by default, the Prometheus exporter adds a _total suffix to sum metrics to follow Prometheus naming conventions. This behavior can be disabled by setting without_type_suffix: false in the exporter's configuration. Note that this is unique to Prometheus; exporting internal metrics through OTLP will not have this behavior.

If you leave out service::telemetry::metrics::readers in the Collector config, the default Prometheus exporter set up by the Collector will already have that option set. However, if you customize the readers and add a Prometheus exporter manually, you will have to set that option to get back the "raw" metric name, which is somewhat confusing.

I guess we could try adding a warning about this on the page? (Maybe also a link to the Collector v1.25.0/v0.119.0 release notes, as this is when the default for manually set up exporters was accidentally changed.)

[tiffany76]

Thanks, @jade-guiton-dd. I wonder if we should create a new section on the page about metrics naming. We have a few call-outs for different naming conventions already. It might make sense to pull them together with a new section heading. WDYT?

@joshdaws0n, hopefully this answers your question! We'll try to get the docs updated soon. Let us know if there's anything else we can help you with.

[joshdaws0n]

Understood, thank you. An update in the documentation to clarify that would be excellent.

[jade-guiton-dd]

@tiffany76 Yes, that's probably a good idea.

[BeverlyJaneJ]

Doc writer happy to be of help here! I'm working on this now and will get a PR started today.

[BeverlyJaneJ]

jade-guiton-dd, joshdaws0n, @tiffany76
Please see this PR