Question

Your team runs a batch data-processing job on Compute Engine that periodically computes the number of records that failed validation in each run. Operations wants this value visualized on a Cloud Monitoring dashboard and available for alerting, but the value is produced only by your application logic and is not exposed by any existing GCP metric or log entry. What is the most appropriate way to get this value into Cloud Monitoring?

Accepted Answer

Create a custom metric with a metric type under 'custom.googleapis.com/' and write the value using the Cloud Monitoring API (timeSeries.create) or a client library from the application.

Answer

Emit a structured log line with the failure count and rely on Cloud Monitoring to automatically discover and chart the field as a metric.

Answer

Enable the Ops Agent's built-in process metrics, which will capture the application's internal validation counters automatically.

Answer

Create an uptime check against the batch job so Cloud Monitoring records the failure count as availability data.