Interpreting the cpu_rate metric

Introduction

The proc_stat.cpu statistic is the total amount of time all CPU cores have spent performing a certain type of work (where type is user, idle, etc.), and the unit of time is USER_HZ (also known as jiffies, or 1/100 second). It is derived from /proc/stat/cpu for all CPUs on the system.

Since proc.stat.cpu is a monotonically increasing value, users should examine the proc.stat.cpu_rate metric instead. proc.stat.cpu_rate is a diff-per-second version of the proc.stat.cpu metric.

Normally, if we limit the query to one machine, the range of proc.stat.cpu_rate should be (0 to 100 * number of cores).

Configuration

Please note that the hosts on your platform should have unique hostnames. Multiple hosts with the same hostname may interfere with how the proc.stat.cpu_rate metric is calculated.