Introduction to the Cloud Monitoring API

This page describes some of the features of the Cloud Monitoring API v3.

For the API reference documentation, see either of the following pages:

Project names in the Monitoring API

All of the methods in the Monitoring API have a required name parameter. This parameter typically has a description like the following:

Required. The project on which to execute the request. The format is:
projects/[PROJECT_ID_OR_NUMBER]

In the Monitoring API, the value of PROJECT_ID_OR_NUMBER identifies a Google Cloud project.

API resources

Metrics

The Monitoring API gives you access to the Cloud Monitoring metrics from Google Cloud services.

For an introduction to metric concepts and the data structures that represent them, see Metrics, time series, and resources.

For a complete list of available metrics, see Metrics list.

Monitored resources

A monitored resource is something about which metrics are collected. For example, you might be interested in the activity of a VM instance or a piece of hardware.

For a list of the available monitored resources, see the Monitored resource list.

Monitored-resource groups

A group is a dynamic collection of monitored resources. You have always been able to create groups manually in the Google Cloud console, and you can also use the Cloud Monitoring API to write code that creates and uses groups.

For more information, see the API reference for Group.

Filters

The Monitoring API uses filters to select metrics, to fetch time-series data, and to collect monitored resources into groups. For more information, see Monitoring filters.

Next steps