How It Works

Features

• Faster submission of metric data from your application because it doesn’t have to do a DNS lookup, or connect out across the internet.
• More reliable delivery because the agent stores-and-forwards, buffering on disk when it can’t connect.
• Easier debugging for the “my metric is missing” problem, because our UI can tell you that an agent has stopped responding.
• More secure: the agent uses HTTPS and while we offer TLS-wrapped carbon protocols, it’s more effort to use than the plaintext ones. Sending straight to the agent bypasses this and we take care of it for you.
• No need to prefix your metrics with an API key for HG’s authentication: it’s handled for you, using API key in the agent config.
• No need to specify new firewall rules for carbon protocols and keep the rules updated - if you can already get HTTPS out of your network, even via a proxy, then it’ll work.

For more details of how the agent works on your machines, see System Layout.

Metrics collected

The agent’s default metrics are listed and explained at Base Metrics.