Prometheus Query to Count Unique Label Values
To count unique label values in Prometheus, you can use the count function along with the by clause to aggregate metrics based on a specific label. This is useful when you want to find out how many unique values a particular label has within a given metric.
Example Scenario
Let’s say you have a metric called http_requests_total that includes a label named instance. You want to count how many unique instances are being tracked.
PromQL Query
Here’s how you can construct your query:
count(http_requests_total) by (instance)
Breakdown of the Query
count(http_requests_total): This part of the query counts the number of occurrences of thehttp_requests_totalmetric across all instances.by (instance): This clause specifies that the counting should be grouped by theinstancelabel. As a result, you will get a count ofhttp_requests_totalfor each uniqueinstance.
Getting Distinct Unique Values
If you want to get the distinct unique values of a label (rather than just counting how many times each unique value appears), you can use the count function on the label_replace function. Here’s an example:
count(count(http_requests_total) by (instance))
Additional Example: Counting Unique Values of a Different Label
Suppose you want to count unique values of another label, such as status, from the same metric:
count(http_requests_total) by (status)
This will give you the count of requests grouped by the status code.
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