Auto Generated APM Metrics
SigNoz automatically generates the following APM/RED (Rate, Error, Duration) metrics from traces:
signoz_calls_total- Information on all calls to your services
- Used to calculate Request Rate and Error Rate for each service, operation, environment, etc.
signoz_latency_sum- Tracks the total sum of all latency values recorded
- Example: If three requests took 1s, 2s, and 3s, the sum would be 6s
signoz_latency_count- Tracks the number of latency measurements recorded
- Example: If 100 requests have been processed, this count would be 100
- Used in conjunction with
signoz_latency_sumto calculate average latency (average request duration) by dividingsignoz_latency_sumbysignoz_latency_count
signoz_latency_bucket- Tracks how many requests fall into specific latency ranges (buckets)
- Default buckets: [2ms, 4ms, 6ms, 8ms, 10ms, ... 15s]
- Counts requests with latency less than or equal to each bucket's value
- Helps understand how request latencies are distributed across various ranges
signoz_db_latency_sum- Represents the total sum of all latencies for database-related operations
- Helps track the total time spent on database operations
signoz_db_latency_count- Counts the number of database operations measured
- When combined with
signoz_db_latency_sum, allows calculation of average latency per database operation
signoz_external_call_latency_sum- Tracks the total sum of latencies for all external calls
- Helps track the total time spent waiting for external services
signoz_external_call_latency_count- Counts the number of external calls made
- Combined with
signoz_external_call_latency_sum, helps calculate the average latency of external calls
Common attributes across these metrics:
operationservice_namespan_kindhttp_status_codestatus_codedeployment_environmentservice_namespace
Understanding Request, Duration, DB, and External Call metrics in detail
Request counts are computed as the number of spans seen per unique set of dimensions, including Errors. For example, the following metric shows 142 calls:
signoz_calls_total{http_status_code="200",operation="/Address",service_name="shippingservice",span_kind="SPAN_KIND_SERVER",status_code="STATUS_CODE_UNSET"} 142
Multiple metrics can be aggregated if, for instance, a user wishes to view call counts just on service_name and operation.
Error counts are computed from the Request counts which have an "Error" Status Code metric dimension. For example, the following metric indicates 220 errors:
signoz_calls_total{http_status_code="503",operation="/checkout",service_name="frontend",span_kind="SPAN_KIND_CLIENT",status_code="STATUS_CODE_ERROR"} 220
Duration is computed from the difference between the span start and end times and inserted into the relevant latency histogram time bucket for each unique set dimensions. For example, the following latency buckets indicate the vast majority of spans (9K) have a 100ms latency:
signoz_latency_bucket{http_status_code="200",label1="value1",operation="/Address",service_name="shippingservice",span_kind="SPAN_KIND_SERVER",status_code="STATUS_CODE_UNSET",le="2"} 327
signoz_latency_bucket{http_status_code="200",label1="value1",operation="/Address",service_name="shippingservice",span_kind="SPAN_KIND_SERVER",status_code="STATUS_CODE_UNSET",le="6"} 751
signoz_latency_bucket{http_status_code="200",label1="value1",operation="/Address",service_name="shippingservice",span_kind="SPAN_KIND_SERVER",status_code="STATUS_CODE_UNSET",le="10"} 1195
signoz_latency_bucket{http_status_code="200",label1="value1",operation="/Address",service_name="shippingservice",span_kind="SPAN_KIND_SERVER",status_code="STATUS_CODE_UNSET",le="100"} 10180
signoz_latency_bucket{http_status_code="200",label1="value1",operation="/Address",service_name="shippingservice",span_kind="SPAN_KIND_SERVER",status_code="STATUS_CODE_UNSET",le="250"} 10180
...
Each metric will have the following dimensions because they are common across all spans:
- Service name
- Operation
- Span kind
- Status code
- HTTP status code
DB Latency is computed from the difference between the span start and end times and inserted into the relevant latency histogram time bucket for each unique set dimensions. The average DB latency is computed by dividing the sum of the DB latency by the count of the DB latency.
Each metric will have the following dimensions:
- Service name
- Operation
- Span kind
- Status code
- Database system
- Database name
External Call Latency is computed from the difference between the span start and end times and inserted into the relevant latency histogram time bucket for each unique set dimensions. The average external call latency is computed by dividing the sum of the external call latency by the count of the external call latency.
Each metric will have the following dimensions:
- Service name
- Operation
- Span kind
- Status code
- External service address
- HTTP status code
APM Metrics Dashboard
SigNoz provides a dashboard template based on the auto-generated metrics. You can import this JSON dashboard into your SigNoz instance.
The dashboard includes the following charts:
- Latency
- Request Rate
- Error Percentage
- Top operations
- DB Calls RPS
- DB Calls Avg Duration
- Top External Calls
HTTP API Monitoring Dashboard
This dashboard template is built on top of available HTTP attributes from OpenTelemetry. You can import this JSON dashboard into your SigNoz instance.
The dashboard includes the following charts:
- Latency(P90) chart for each Endpoint
- HTTP Status code distribution
- Top HTTP Endpoints
- External HTTP APIs
DB Calls Monitoring Dashboard
This dashboard template is built on top of available DB client call attributes from OpenTelemetry. You can import this JSON dashboard into your SigNoz instance.
The dashboard includes the following charts:
- DB Transaction Rate
- Top DB calls
- Slowest DB calls
- DB Call error rate
Key Operations Dashboard
The Key Operations dashboard gives you a per-operation breakdown of latency, error rate, and request rate for your services. You can import this Key Operations Dashboard into your SigNoz instance.
The dashboard includes:
- P99 Latency (top 20) — bar chart of the slowest operations
- Average P99/P95/P50 Latency (all) — table with percentile breakdown per operation
- Error Percentage (top 20) — bar chart of operations with highest error rates
- Average error percentage (all) — table of error rates per operation
- Request rate (top 20) — bar chart of highest-traffic operations
- Average reqs/s (all) — table of request rates per operation
