{ host: dfs1 what: diskspace mountpoint: srv/node/dfs10 unit: B type: used metric_type: gauge } meta: { agent: diamond, processed_by: statsd2 } What & Why? If you have a handful of metrics, you don't need to think about this and can stick with simple names for your metrics. However, as we grow our number of metrics and/or want to make more sense out of them, we need to be more systematic. Here are