Guides
Usage Metering

Meter Dimensions

3min

Dimensions

Amberflo Metering Service enables you to ask and answer the following questions in real-time and with accuracy: What was used by whom, when, where, and how much? Amberflo Meter Event data structure encapsulates this in the following way -

What

Meter name and API name

Whom

When

How much

Where

CustomerID

Timestamp

Meter value

Dimensions

As part of your meter definition, you can add dimensions which are custom key-value pairs added to meter event records. Dimensions are the schemaless portion of the meter definition. It is a powerful metadata construct that gives you full flexibility in customizing the payload for a meter event.

You might have one or more attributes related to the "where" aspect of the meter event. For example,

  • where did this meter originate (e.g. cloud provider, region, zone, etc.)
  • who, in addition to the customer ID should I attribute this meter to (e.g. cluster name, project, department, etc.)
  • state of the event
  • other attributes/markers

Amberflo automatically groups and filters the meter events by Dimensions. For example, if you create a Dimension name called: Cloud_Provider and send values ranging from (AWS, Azure, Google, ...), Amberflo automatically sorts, groups and filters meter events by these dimension values. These dimensions can also be used later to construct pricing plans and promotions.

Dimensions serve an important function in a cloud metering service. The concept allows you to enrich your meter records with custom fields and metadata.

Important note: If Dimensions are not defined ahead of time, new ones are automatically created upon ingestion.

Ingestion Amberflo automatically pivots (aggregates and groups) meter events by each dimension. Using the Usage Explorer you can, in real-time, view aggregated meter events sorted by dimension.

Extraction Amberflo Usage API enables you to extract aggregated meter events and values by dimension.

Below are some common dimension types, but you are free to create any dimensions specific to your use case and domain:

  1. Additional resource or application IDs
  2. Department name
  3. Cluster name or Project name
  4. Cloud Region, Zone, etc.
  5. Deployment environment
  6. Customer type
  7. Service version more...
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