Tags

This page describes StackState version 4.3.

The StackState 4.3 version range is End of Life (EOL) and no longer supported. We encourage customers still running the 4.3 version range to upgrade to a more recent release.

Go to the documentation for the latest StackState release.

Introduction

Tags (also known as labels) are a way of associating names with topology so it can be filtered.

Define Tags

Below are StackState's tagging restrictions, requirements, and suggestions:

1. Tags must start with a letter and after that may contain the characters listed below:

   • Alphanumerics

   • Underscores

   • Minuses

   • Colons

   • Periods

   • Slashes

     Other special characters are converted to underscores.

     Note: A tag cannot end with a colon, for example tag:

2. Tags can be up to 200 characters long and support Unicode.

3. Tags are converted to lowercase. Therefore, CamelCase tags are not recommended.

4. A tag can be in the format value or <KEY>:<VALUE>. For optimal functionality, we recommend constructing tags in the <KEY>:<VALUE> format. Commonly used tag keys are env, instance, and name. The key always precedes the first colon of the global tag definition, for example:

   Tag	Key	Value
   customer:US:acme	customer	US:acme
   customer:acme	customer	acme

5. Tags shouldn't originate from unbounded sources, such as EPOCH timestamps, user IDs, or request IDs. Doing so may infinitely increase the number of tags in StackState.

Assign Tags

Tags may be assigned using any (or all) of the following methods.

Method	Assign tags
Configuration Files	Manually in your main agent configuration files, or in your integrations configuration file.
StackPack Inheritance	Automatically with supported StackPacks after setup

Configuration Files

The hostname (tag key host) is assigned automatically by the StackState Agent. To customize the hostname, use the Agent configuration file, stackstate.yaml:

# Set the hostname (default: auto-detected)
# Must comply with RFC-1123, which permits only:
# "A" to "Z", "a" to "z", "0" to "9", and the hyphen (-)
hostname: mymachine.mydomain

The Agent configuration file (stackstate.yaml) is also used to set host tags which apply to all data forwarded by the StackState Agent (see YAML formats below).

Tags for the integrations installed with the Agent are configured via YAML files located in the conf.d directory of the Agent install.

YAML formats

In YAML files, use a tag dictionary with a list of tags you want assigned at that level. Tag dictionaries have two different yet functionally equivalent forms:

tags: <KEY_1>:<VALUE_1>, <KEY_2>:<VALUE_2>, <KEY_3>:<VALUE_3>

or

tags:
    - <KEY_1>:<VALUE_1>
    - <KEY_2>:<VALUE_2>
    - <KEY_3>:<VALUE_3>

It is recommended you assign tags as <KEY>:<VALUE> pairs, but simple tags are also accepted.

StackPack Inheritance

The most efficient method for assigning tags is to rely on your StackPacks. Tags assigned to your Amazon Web Services components, Azure components, and more are all automatically assigned to the topology when they are brought into StackState.

Common tags

A number of StackState integrations understand common tags. These are special tags that can be placed on items in the source system and are used by StackState when the topology is retrieved.

Tag	Description
stackstate-layer	The component will be placed in the specified layer in StackState.
stackstate-domain	The component will be placed in the specified domain in StackState.
stackstate-environment	The component will be placed in the specified environment in StackState.
stackstate-identifiers	The specified value will be as an identifier to the StackState component.

For example, an application in vSphere with the tag stackstate-layer:databases would be placed in the StackState topology layer databases by the StackState vSphere integration.

Using Tags

After you have assigned tags at the host and integration level, start using them to create views.