Default Prometheus metrics configuration in Azure Monitor

2025-10-01

When you enable Prometheus metrics collection in Azure Monitor from your Kubernetes cluster, it uses a default configuration for targets, dashboards, and recording rules. This article describes the default configuration and the scenarios where you may choose to customize it for your specific requirements.

Minimal ingestion profile

Minimal ingestion profile is a setting that is enabled by default when Prometheus metrics are enabled in Azure Monitor for a cluster. This setting reduces the volume of metrics ingested by limiting them to only metrics used by default dashboards, default recording rules, and default alerts. These targets and metrics are listed in this article. If this setting is disabled, then all available metrics for the default targets are collected which can significantly increase ingestion volume.

You can change the minimal ingestion profile setting by modifying the metrics setting ConfigMap as described in Customize scraping of Prometheus metrics in Azure Monitor using ConfigMap.

Customization scenarios

You may choose to use the default configuration or customize collection for your particular requirements. The following table lists the four potential collection scenarios and the recommended method to achieve each.

Scenario	Method
Ingest only minimal metrics for each default target.	No change needed. Use the default behavior without modification. Only metrics listed in this article are ingested for each of the default targets.
Ingest a few other metrics for one or more default targets in addition to minimal metrics.	Keep minimal ingestion enabled and specify the appropriate keep lists specific to the target. See Customize metrics collected by default targets.
Ingest only a specific set of metrics for a default target.	Disable minimal ingestion and specify the appropriate keep list specific to the target in a custom scrape job. See Create custom Prometheus scrape job from your Kubernetes cluster using ConfigMap.
Ingest all metrics scraped for the default target.	Disable minimal ingestion and don't specify any keep list for that target. See Customize metrics collected by default targets

Targets scraped by default

Following are the targets that the Azure Monitor metrics add-on can scrape by default and the conditions under which they are enabled. See Enable and disable default targets to enable/disable default targets.

The following targets are enabled by default.

cadvisor
nodeexporter
kubelet
kube-state-metrics
networkobservabilityRetina

Th following targets are enabled when control plane metrics (preview) is enabled.

controlplane-apiserver
controlplane-etcd

The following targets are enable when Container Network Observability is enabled.

networkobservabilityHubble
networkobservabilityCilium

The following targets are enabled when Azure Container Storage is enabled.

acstor-capacity-provisioner
acstor-metrics-exporter

The following targets are disabled by default.

coredns
kubeproxy
apiserver

The following targets are disabled by default and require Windows metrics collection (preview) to be enabled.

windows-exporter
kube-proxy-windows

Metrics collected from default targets

The following metrics are collected by default from each default target. All other metrics are dropped through relabeling rules. The target must be enabled for the metrics to be collected.

kubelet

kubelet_volume_stats_used_bytes
kubelet_node_name
kubelet_running_pods
kubelet_running_pod_count
kubelet_running_containers
kubelet_running_container_count
volume_manager_total_volumes
kubelet_node_config_error
kubelet_runtime_operations_total
kubelet_runtime_operations_errors_total
kubelet_runtime_operations_duration_seconds kubelet_runtime_operations_duration_seconds_bucket kubelet_runtime_operations_duration_seconds_sum kubelet_runtime_operations_duration_seconds_count
kubelet_pod_start_duration_seconds kubelet_pod_start_duration_seconds_bucket kubelet_pod_start_duration_seconds_sum kubelet_pod_start_duration_seconds_count
kubelet_pod_worker_duration_seconds kubelet_pod_worker_duration_seconds_bucket kubelet_pod_worker_duration_seconds_sum kubelet_pod_worker_duration_seconds_count
storage_operation_duration_seconds storage_operation_duration_seconds_bucket storage_operation_duration_seconds_sum storage_operation_duration_seconds_count
storage_operation_errors_total
kubelet_cgroup_manager_duration_seconds kubelet_cgroup_manager_duration_seconds_bucket kubelet_cgroup_manager_duration_seconds_sum kubelet_cgroup_manager_duration_seconds_count
kubelet_pleg_relist_duration_seconds kubelet_pleg_relist_duration_seconds_bucket kubelet_pleg_relist_duration_sum kubelet_pleg_relist_duration_seconds_count
kubelet_pleg_relist_interval_seconds kubelet_pleg_relist_interval_seconds_bucket kubelet_pleg_relist_interval_seconds_sum kubelet_pleg_relist_interval_seconds_count
rest_client_requests_total
rest_client_request_duration_seconds rest_client_request_duration_seconds_bucket rest_client_request_duration_seconds_sum rest_client_request_duration_seconds_count
process_resident_memory_bytes
process_cpu_seconds_total
go_goroutines
kubelet_volume_stats_capacity_bytes
kubelet_volume_stats_available_bytes
kubelet_volume_stats_inodes_used
kubelet_volume_stats_inodes
kubernetes_build_info"

coredns

coredns_build_info
coredns_panics_total
coredns_dns_responses_total
coredns_forward_responses_total
coredns_dns_request_duration_seconds coredns_dns_request_duration_seconds_bucket coredns_dns_request_duration_seconds_sum coredns_dns_request_duration_seconds_count
coredns_forward_request_duration_seconds coredns_forward_request_duration_seconds_bucket coredns_forward_request_duration_seconds_sum coredns_forward_request_duration_seconds_count
coredns_dns_requests_total
coredns_forward_requests_total
coredns_cache_hits_total
coredns_cache_misses_total
coredns_cache_entries
coredns_plugin_enabled
coredns_dns_request_size_bytes coredns_dns_request_size_bytes_bucket coredns_dns_request_size_bytes_sum coredns_dns_request_size_bytes_count
coredns_dns_response_size_bytes coredns_dns_response_size_bytes_bucket coredns_dns_response_size_bytes_sum coredns_dns_response_size_bytes_count
coredns_dns_response_size_bytes coredns_dns_response_size_bytes_bucket coredns_dns_response_size_bytes_sum coredns_dns_response_size_bytes_count
process_resident_memory_bytes
process_cpu_seconds_total
go_goroutines
kubernetes_build_info"

cadvisor

container_spec_cpu_period
container_spec_cpu_quota
container_cpu_usage_seconds_total
container_memory_rss
container_network_receive_bytes_total
container_network_transmit_bytes_total
container_network_receive_packets_total
container_network_transmit_packets_total
container_network_receive_packets_dropped_total
container_network_transmit_packets_dropped_total
container_fs_reads_total
container_fs_writes_total
container_fs_reads_bytes_total
container_fs_writes_bytes_total
container_memory_working_set_bytes
container_memory_cache
container_memory_swap
container_cpu_cfs_throttled_periods_total
container_cpu_cfs_periods_total
kubernetes_build_info"

kubeproxy

kubeproxy_sync_proxy_rules_duration_seconds kubeproxy_sync_proxy_rules_duration_seconds_bucket kubeproxy_sync_proxy_rules_duration_seconds_sum kubeproxy_sync_proxy_rules_duration_seconds_count kubeproxy_network_programming_duration_seconds
kubeproxy_network_programming_duration_seconds kubeproxy_network_programming_duration_seconds_bucket kubeproxy_network_programming_duration_seconds_sum kubeproxy_network_programming_duration_seconds_count rest_client_requests_total
rest_client_request_duration_seconds rest_client_request_duration_seconds_bucket rest_client_request_duration_seconds_sum rest_client_request_duration_seconds_count
process_resident_memory_bytes
process_cpu_seconds_total
go_goroutines
kubernetes_build_info"

apiserver

apiserver_request_duration_seconds apiserver_request_duration_seconds_bucket apiserver_request_duration_seconds_sum apiserver_request_duration_seconds_count
apiserver_request_total
workqueue_adds_total``workqueue_depth
workqueue_queue_duration_seconds workqueue_queue_duration_seconds_bucket workqueue_queue_duration_seconds_sum workqueue_queue_duration_seconds_count
process_resident_memory_bytes
process_cpu_seconds_total
go_goroutines
kubernetes_build_info"

kube-state

kube_job_status_succeeded
kube_job_spec_completions
kube_daemonset_status_desired_number_scheduled
kube_daemonset_status_number_ready
kube_deployment_status_replicas_ready
kube_pod_container_status_last_terminated_reason
kube_pod_container_status_waiting_reason
kube_pod_container_status_restarts_total
kube_node_status_allocatable
kube_pod_owner
kube_pod_container_resource_requests
kube_pod_status_phase
kube_pod_container_resource_limits
kube_replicaset_owner
kube_resourcequota
kube_namespace_status_phase
kube_node_status_capacity
kube_node_info
kube_pod_info
kube_deployment_spec_replicas
kube_deployment_status_replicas_available
kube_deployment_status_replicas_updated
kube_statefulset_status_replicas_ready
kube_statefulset_status_replicas
kube_statefulset_status_replicas_updated
kube_job_status_start_time
kube_job_status_active
kube_job_failed
kube_horizontalpodautoscaler_status_desired_replicas
kube_horizontalpodautoscaler_status_current_replicas
kube_horizontalpodautoscaler_spec_min_replicas
kube_horizontalpodautoscaler_spec_max_replicas
kubernetes_build_info
kube_node_status_condition
kube_node_spec_taint
kube_pod_container_info
kube_resource_labels (ex - kube_pod_labels, kube_deployment_labels)
kube_resource_annotations (ex - kube_pod_annotations, kube_deployment_annotations)

nodeexporter

node_cpu_seconds_total
node_memory_MemAvailable_bytes
node_memory_Buffers_bytes
node_memory_Cached_bytes
node_memory_MemFree_bytes
node_memory_Slab_bytes
node_memory_MemTotal_bytes
node_netstat_Tcp_RetransSegs
node_netstat_Tcp_OutSegs
node_netstat_TcpExt_TCPSynRetrans
node_load1``node_load5
node_load15
node_disk_read_bytes_total
node_disk_written_bytes_total
node_disk_io_time_seconds_total
node_filesystem_size_bytes
node_filesystem_avail_bytes
node_filesystem_readonly
node_network_receive_bytes_total
node_network_transmit_bytes_total
node_vmstat_pgmajfault
node_network_receive_drop_total
node_network_transmit_drop_total
node_disk_io_time_weighted_seconds_total
node_exporter_build_info
node_time_seconds
node_uname_info"

windowsexporter

windows_system_system_up_time
windows_cpu_time_total
windows_memory_available_bytes
windows_os_visible_memory_bytes
windows_memory_cache_bytes
windows_memory_modified_page_list_bytes
windows_memory_standby_cache_core_bytes
windows_memory_standby_cache_normal_priority_bytes
windows_memory_standby_cache_reserve_bytes
windows_memory_swap_page_operations_total
windows_logical_disk_read_seconds_total
windows_logical_disk_write_seconds_total
windows_logical_disk_size_bytes
windows_logical_disk_free_bytes
windows_net_bytes_total
windows_net_packets_received_discarded_total
windows_net_packets_outbound_discarded_total
windows_container_available
windows_container_cpu_usage_seconds_total
windows_container_memory_usage_commit_bytes
windows_container_memory_usage_private_working_set_bytes
windows_container_network_receive_bytes_total
windows_container_network_transmit_bytes_total

windowskubeproxy

kubeproxy_sync_proxy_rules_duration_seconds
kubeproxy_sync_proxy_rules_duration_seconds_bucket
kubeproxy_sync_proxy_rules_duration_seconds_sum
kubeproxy_sync_proxy_rules_duration_seconds_count
rest_client_requests_total
rest_client_request_duration_seconds
rest_client_request_duration_seconds_bucket
rest_client_request_duration_seconds_sum
rest_client_request_duration_seconds_count
process_resident_memory_bytes
process_cpu_seconds_total
go_goroutines

networkobservabilityHubble

See Container Network Observability metrics.

networkobservabilityCilium

See Container Network Observability metrics.

controlplane-apiserver

apiserver_request_total
apiserver_cache_list_fetched_objects_total
apiserver_cache_list_returned_objects_total
apiserver_flowcontrol_demand_seats_average
apiserver_flowcontrol_current_limit_seats
apiserver_request_sli_duration_seconds_bucket{le=+inf}
apiserver_request_sli_duration_seconds_count
apiserver_request_sli_duration_seconds_sum
process_start_time_seconds
apiserver_request_duration_seconds_bucket{le=+inf}
apiserver_request_duration_seconds_count
apiserver_request_duration_seconds_sum
apiserver_storage_list_fetched_objects_total
apiserver_storage_list_returned_objects_total
apiserver_current_inflight_requests

Note

apiserver_request_duration_seconds and apiserver_request_sli_duration_seconds are histogram metrics which have high cardinality and all series are not collected by default. Only the sum and count are used for gathering the average latencies.

controlplane-cluster-autoscaler

rest_client_requests_total
cluster_autoscaler_last_activity
cluster_autoscaler_cluster_safe_to_autoscale
cluster_autoscaler_scale_down_in_cooldown
cluster_autoscaler_scaled_up_nodes_total
cluster_autoscaler_unneeded_nodes_count
cluster_autoscaler_unschedulable_pods_count
cluster_autoscaler_nodes_count
cloudprovider_azure_api_request_errors
cloudprovider_azure_api_request_duration_seconds_bucket
cloudprovider_azure_api_request_duration_seconds_count

controlplane-node-auto-provisioning

karpenter_pods_state
karpenter_nodes_created_total
karpenter_nodes_terminated_total
karpenter_nodeclaims_disrupted_total
karpenter_voluntary_disruption_eligible_nodes
karpenter_voluntary_disruption_decisions_total

controlplane-kube-scheduler

scheduler_pending_pods
scheduler_unschedulable_pods
scheduler_pod_scheduling_attempts
scheduler_queue_incoming_pods_total
scheduler_preemption_attempts_total
scheduler_preemption_victims
scheduler_scheduling_attempt_duration_seconds
scheduler_schedule_attempts_total
scheduler_pod_scheduling_duration_seconds

controlplane-kube-controller-manager

rest_client_request_duration_seconds
rest_client_requests_total
workqueue_depth

controlplane-etcd

etcd_server_has_leader
rest_client_requests_total
etcd_mvcc_db_total_size_in_bytes
etcd_mvcc_db_total_size_in_use_in_bytes
etcd_server_slow_read_indexes_total
etcd_server_slow_apply_total
etcd_network_client_grpc_sent_bytes_total
etcd_server_heartbeat_send_failures_total

acstor-capacity-provisioner (job=acstor-capacity-provisioner)

See Azure Container Storage metrics.

acstor-metrics-exporter (job=acstor-metrics-exporter)

See Azure Container Storage metrics.

Dashboards

The following default dashboards are automatically provisioned and configured by Azure Monitor managed service for Prometheus when you link your Azure Monitor workspace to an Azure Managed Grafana instance. They are provisioned in the specified Azure Grafana instance under the Managed Prometheus folder. These are the standard open source community dashboards for monitoring Kubernetes clusters with Prometheus and Grafana.

Kubernetes / Compute Resources / Cluster
Kubernetes / Compute Resources / Namespace (Pods)
Kubernetes / Compute Resources / Node (Pods)
Kubernetes / Compute Resources / Pod
Kubernetes / Compute Resources / Namespace (Workloads)
Kubernetes / Compute Resources / Workload
Kubernetes / Kubelet
Node Exporter / USE Method / Node
Node Exporter / Nodes
Kubernetes / Compute Resources / Cluster (Windows)
Kubernetes / Compute Resources / Namespace (Windows)
Kubernetes / Compute Resources / Pod (Windows)
Kubernetes / USE Method / Cluster (Windows)
Kubernetes / USE Method / Node (Windows)

Recording rules

The following default recording rules are automatically configured by Azure Monitor managed service for Prometheus when you configure Prometheus metrics to be scraped from an Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) cluster. Source code for these recording rules can be found in this GitHub repository. These are the standard open source recording rules used in the dashboards above.

cluster:node_cpu:ratio_rate5m
namespace_cpu:kube_pod_container_resource_requests:sum
namespace_cpu:kube_pod_container_resource_limits:sum
:node_memory_MemAvailable_bytes:sum
namespace_memory:kube_pod_container_resource_requests:sum
namespace_memory:kube_pod_container_resource_limits:sum
namespace_workload_pod:kube_pod_owner:relabel
node_namespace_pod_container:container_cpu_usage_seconds_total:sum_irate
cluster:namespace:pod_cpu:active:kube_pod_container_resource_requests
cluster:namespace:pod_cpu:active:kube_pod_container_resource_limits
cluster:namespace:pod_memory:active:kube_pod_container_resource_requests
cluster:namespace:pod_memory:active:kube_pod_container_resource_limits
node_namespace_pod_container:container_memory_working_set_bytes
node_namespace_pod_container:container_memory_rss
node_namespace_pod_container:container_memory_cache
node_namespace_pod_container:container_memory_swap
instance:node_cpu_utilisation:rate5m
instance:node_load1_per_cpu:ratio
instance:node_memory_utilisation:ratio
instance:node_vmstat_pgmajfault:rate5m
instance:node_network_receive_bytes_excluding_lo:rate5m
instance:node_network_transmit_bytes_excluding_lo:rate5m
instance:node_network_receive_drop_excluding_lo:rate5m
instance:node_network_transmit_drop_excluding_lo:rate5m
instance_device:node_disk_io_time_seconds:rate5m
instance_device:node_disk_io_time_weighted_seconds:rate5m
instance:node_num_cpu:sum
node:windows_node:sum
node:windows_node_num_cpu:sum
:windows_node_cpu_utilisation:avg5m
node:windows_node_cpu_utilisation:avg5m
:windows_node_memory_utilisation:
:windows_node_memory_MemFreeCached_bytes:sum
node:windows_node_memory_totalCached_bytes:sum
:windows_node_memory_MemTotal_bytes:sum
node:windows_node_memory_bytes_available:sum
node:windows_node_memory_bytes_total:sum
node:windows_node_memory_utilisation:ratio
node:windows_node_memory_utilisation:
node:windows_node_memory_swap_io_pages:irate
:windows_node_disk_utilisation:avg_irate
node:windows_node_disk_utilisation:avg_irate
node:windows_node_filesystem_usage:
node:windows_node_filesystem_avail:
:windows_node_net_utilisation:sum_irate
node:windows_node_net_utilisation:sum_irate
:windows_node_net_saturation:sum_irate
node:windows_node_net_saturation:sum_irate
windows_pod_container_available
windows_container_total_runtime
windows_container_memory_usage
windows_container_private_working_set_usage
windows_container_network_received_bytes_total
windows_container_network_transmitted_bytes_total
kube_pod_windows_container_resource_memory_request
kube_pod_windows_container_resource_memory_limit
kube_pod_windows_container_resource_cpu_cores_request
kube_pod_windows_container_resource_cpu_cores_limit
namespace_pod_container:windows_container_cpu_usage_seconds_total:sum_rate

Prometheus visualization recording rules

The following recording rules are automatically deployed to support Prometheus visualizations.

ux:cluster_pod_phase_count:sum
ux:node_cpu_usage:sum_irate
ux:node_memory_usage:sum
ux:controller_pod_phase_count:sum
ux:controller_container_count:sum
ux:controller_workingset_memory:sum
ux:controller_cpu_usage:sum_irate
ux:controller_rss_memory:sum
ux:controller_resource_limit:sum
ux:controller_container_restarts:max
ux:pod_container_count:sum
ux:pod_cpu_usage:sum_irate
ux:pod_workingset_memory:sum
ux:pod_rss_memory:sum
ux:pod_resource_limit:sum
ux:pod_container_restarts:max
ux:node_network_receive_drop_total:sum_irate
ux:node_network_transmit_drop_total:sum_irate

The following recording rules are required for Windows support. They're deployed automitcally but aren't enabled by default. See enabling and disabling rule groups to enable them.

ux:node_cpu_usage_windows:sum_irate
ux:node_memory_usage_windows:sum
ux:controller_cpu_usage_windows:sum_irate
ux:controller_workingset_memory_windows:sum
ux:pod_cpu_usage_windows:sum_irate
ux:pod_workingset_memory_windows:sum

Next steps

Customize scraping of Prometheus metrics.

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