Universal Metrics Exporter metrics reference
This document lists every metric that Astro exports through the Universal Metrics Exporter. Use this reference to identify which metrics are available, the Prometheus labels you can query against, and how each Astro metric name maps to its upstream Apache Airflow name.
Astro exports two categories of metrics:
- Airflow application metrics describe the health, success, and performance of Dag execution. Astro normalizes these from the StatsD format that Airflow emits before exporting them to your Prometheus endpoint.
- Infrastructure metrics describe the resource usage and lifecycle health of the Kubernetes Pods that run each Airflow component.
Astro doesn’t export metrics outside of these tables. The mapping configuration drops any metric that doesn’t match a rule.
How Astro normalizes Airflow metrics
Astro applies the following transformations to Airflow metrics before they reach your Prometheus endpoint. For the source-of-truth mapping rules, see the Astro StatsD mappings file.
- StatsD names become Prometheus names. Astro replaces dots with underscores. For example,
airflow.dag_processing.import_errorsbecomesairflow_dag_processing_import_errors. - Variable name parts become Prometheus labels. High-cardinality identifiers move out of the metric name and into labels so that one metric name covers many dimensions. For example, Astro exports the Airflow metric
airflow.dag.<dag_id>.<task_id>.durationasairflow_task_durationwithdag_idandtask_idlabels. - Legacy and current Airflow names both flow through. Astro maps metrics that Airflow renamed across versions under both their legacy and current names so that Dags running on different Astro Runtime versions both emit. For example, both
zombies_killed(Airflow 2.x) andtask_instances_without_heartbeats_killed(Airflow 3 and later) export when Airflow emits them. - Astro adds default metadata labels. Every exported metric carries the standard Astro labels documented in Export metrics, such as
deploymentId,organizationId, andworkspaceId.
Airflow application metrics
Apache Airflow classifies metrics into three types based on how the value behaves over time: counters, gauges, and timers. The following tables use Airflow’s classification. For background on each type, see the Apache Airflow metrics reference.
Counters
A counter records the cumulative count of events that occur over time, such as task failures or scheduler heartbeats.
Gauges
A gauge measures a point-in-time value that can rise and fall, such as the number of running tasks or open executor slots.
Timers
A timer measures the duration of an event, such as how long a task or Dag run takes to complete. Astro exports timer values in milliseconds.
Astro event scheduler metrics
The Astro event scheduler emits metrics under the airflow.astro_event_scheduler.* namespace. Astro strips the airflow. prefix and exports each metric as astro_event_scheduler_<rest>. Because this is a catch-all mapping, the specific metric names emitted depend on the version of Astro Runtime running in your Deployment.
Infrastructure metrics
Infrastructure metrics describe the Kubernetes Pods that run each Airflow component. Use them to track CPU, memory, storage, and lifecycle health.