**NOTE: The metrics feature is considered as an experimental. We might add/change/remove metrics without warning in the future releases.**
etcd uses [Prometheus](http://prometheus.io/) for metrics reporting in the server. The metrics can be used for real-time monitoring and debugging.
The simplest way to see the available metrics is to cURL the metrics endpoint `/metrics` of etcd. The format is described [here](http://prometheus.io/docs/instrumenting/exposition_formats/).
You can also follow the doc [here](http://prometheus.io/docs/introduction/getting_started/) to start a Promethus server and monitor etcd metrics.
The naming of metrics follows the suggested [best practice of Promethus](http://prometheus.io/docs/practices/naming/). A metric name has an `etcd` prefix as its namespace and a subsystem prefix (for example `wal` and `etcdserver`).
| file_descriptors_used_total | The total number of file descriptors used | Gauge |
| proposal_durations_milliseconds | The latency distributions of committing proposal | Summary |
| pending_proposal_total | The total number of pending proposals | Gauge |
| proposal_failed_total | The total number of failed proposals | Counter |
High file descriptors (`file_descriptors_used_total`) usage (near the file descriptors limitation of the process) indicates a potential out of file descriptors issue. That might cause etcd fails to create new WAL files and panics.
[Proposal](glossary.md#proposal) durations (`proposal_durations_milliseconds`) give you an summary about the proposal commit latency. Latency can be introduced into this process by network and disk IO.
Pending proposal (`pending_proposal_total`) gives you an idea about how many proposal are in the queue and waiting for commit. An increasing pending number indicates a high client load or an unstable cluster.
Failed proposals (`proposal_failed_total`) are normally related to two issues: temporary failures related to a leader election or longer duration downtime caused by a loss of quorum in the cluster.
Label `sendingType` is the connection type to send messages. `message`, `msgapp` and `msgappv2` use HTTP streaming, while `pipeline` does HTTP request for each message.
Label `msgType` is the type of raft message. `MsgApp` is log replication message; `MsgSnap` is snapshot install message; `MsgProp` is proposal forward message; the others are used to maintain raft internal status. If you have a large snapshot, you would expect a long msgSnap sending latency. For other types of messages, you would expect low latency, which is comparable to your ping latency if you have enough network bandwidth.
Label `remoteID` is the member ID of the message destination.