Monitor disk IOPS and throughput rates

Monitoring disk performance rates provides useful information to help you find the right size and configuration of your disks. Compute Engine lets you view the average and peak IOPS and throughput rates for your disks by using the Observability tab in the Google Cloud console. This tab provides a predefined dashboard using metric data so you can monitor your disk performance and configuration.

The Observability tab shows the following graphs for IOPS and throughput by default:

  • Mean Throughput (MB/s): the average throughput rate, in MB per second, for a disk over a period of time
  • Mean Operations (IOPS): the average number of I/O operations per second (IOPS) for a disk over a period of time
  • Peak Throughput (MB/s): the peak throughput rates, in MB per second, for a disk over a period of time
  • Peak Operations (IOPS): the peak number of I/O operations per second (IOPS) for a disk over a period of time

You can select the time period for the graphs on this page, using predefined values of one hour, six hours, one day, one week, one month, or six weeks. You can also specify a custom time period for the graph data.

Before you begin

  • If you haven't already, then set up authentication. Authentication is the process by which your identity is verified for access to Google Cloud services and APIs. To run code or samples from a local development environment, you can authenticate to Compute Engine by selecting one of the following options:

    Select the tab for how you plan to use the samples on this page:

    Console

    When you use the Google Cloud console to access Google Cloud services and APIs, you don't need to set up authentication.

    gcloud

    1. Install the Google Cloud CLI, then initialize it by running the following command: 

      gcloud init
    2. Set a default region and zone.

    REST

    To use the REST API samples on this page in a local development environment, you use the credentials you provide to the gcloud CLI.

      Install the Google Cloud CLI, then initialize it by running the following command: 

      gcloud init

    For more information, see Authenticate for using REST in the Google Cloud authentication documentation.

Access the disk monitoring page for a single disk

You can view the disk monitoring page in the Google Cloud console.

  1. In the Google Cloud console, go to the Disks page.

    Go to Disks

  2. Click the name of a disk to open the Manage disk page.

  3. Click the Observability tab to display the monitoring dashboard for the disk.

  4. Optional: Reset the one hour default timeframe to the timeframe you want to monitor, by choosing one of the following options:

    • 6 hours
    • 1 day
    • 1 week
    • 1 month
    • 6 weeks
    • Custom date or time range

Customize the disk monitoring dashboard

Use the following instructions to modify the graphs shown on the disk monitoring dashboard.

  1. Access the disk Observability tab.

  2. Click query_stats Explore data.

    This opens an Explore page, where you can create a customized monitoring chart or table. For information about how to create a chart for a specific metric, see Chart a single metric type.

  3. After creating a custom graph or table, you can save the result to a new or existing custom dashboard.

    For more information about custom dashboards, see View and customize Google Cloud dashboards.