Merge pull request #2528 from mrueg/metrics-best-practices

docs: Add best practices for metrics

docs/design/metrics-best-practices.md

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+# Kube-State-Metrics - Timeseries best practices
+
+---
+
+Author: Manuel Rüger (<manuel@rueg.eu>)
+
+Date: October 17th 2024
+
+---
+
+## Introduction
+
+Kube-State-Metrics' goal is to provide insights into the state of Kubernetes objects by exposing them as metrics.
+This document provides guidelines with the goal to create a good user experience when using these metrics.
+
+Please be aware that this document is introduced in a later stage of the project and there might be metrics that do not follow these best practices.
+Feel encouraged to report these metrics and provide a pull request to improve them.
+
+## General best practices
+
+We follow [Prometheus](https://prometheus.io/docs/practices/naming/) best practices in terms of naming and labeling.
+
+## Best practices for kube-state-metrics
+
+### Avoid pre-computation
+
+kube-state-metrics should expose metrics on an individual object level and avoid any sort of pre-computation unless it is required due to for example high cardinality on objects.
+We prefer not to add metrics that can be derived from existing raw metrics. For example, we would not want to expose a metric called `kube_pod_total` as it can be computed with `count(kube_pod_info)`.
+This way kube-state-metrics allows the user to have full control on how they want to use the metrics and gives them flexibility to do specific computation.
+
+### Static object properties
+
+An object usually has a stable set of properties that do not change during its lifecycle in Kubernetes.
+This includes properties like name, namespace, uid etc. that have a 1:1 relationship with the object.
+It is a good practice to group those together into an `_info` metric.
+If there is a 1:n relationship (e.g. a list of ports), it should be in a separate metric to avoid generating too many metrics.
+
+### Dynamic object properties
+
+An object can also have a dynamic set of properties, which are usually part of the status field.
+These change during the lifecycle of the object.
+For example a pod can be in different states like "Pending", "Running" etc.
+These should be part of a "State Set" that includes labels that identify the object as well as the dynamic property.
+
+### Linked properties
+
+If an object contains a substructure that links multiple properties together (e.g. endpoint address and port), those should be reported in the same metric.
+
+### Optional properties
+
+Some Kubernetes objects have optional fields. In case there is an optional value, the label should still be exposed, ideally as an empty string.
+
+### Timestamps
+
+Timestamps like creation time or modification time should be exposed as a value. The metric should end with `_timestamp_seconds`. The date value is represented in [UNIX epoch seconds](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix_time).
+
+### Cardinality
+
+Some object properties can cause cardinality issues if they can contain a lot of different values or are linked together with multiple properties that also can change a lot.
+In this case it is better to limit the number of values that can be exposed within kube-state-metrics by allowing only a few of them and have a default for others.
+If for example the Kubernetes object contains a status field that contains an error message that can change a lot, it would be better to have a boolean `error="true"` label in case there is an error.
+If there are some error messages that are worth exposing, those could be exposed and for any other message, a default value could be provided.
+
+## Stability
+
+We follow the stability framework derived from Kubernetes, in which we expose experimental and stable metrics.
+Experimental metrics are recently introduced or expose alpha/beta resources in the Kubernetes API.
+They can change anytime and should be used with caution.
+They can be promoted to a stable metric once the object stabilized in the Kubernetes API or they were part of two consecutive releases and haven't observed any changes in them.
+
+Stable metrics are considered frozen with the exception of new labels being added.
+A stable metric or a label on a stable metric can be deprecated in release Major.Minor and the earliest point it will be removed is the release Major.Minor+2.