Improved searchability for high-cardinality metrics in Metric Explorer, and more

Hello! This is Sudo (id:do-su-0805) from the Mackerel Team CRE. I'm here to share the details of our latest update.

Improved searchability for high-cardinality metrics in Metric Explorer

Metric Explorer is a feature that allows you to explore labeled metrics using label-based filtering. Previously, only values displayed as selectable options could be used for filtering. However, when a metric had high cardinality, the specific value a user wanted to filter by sometimes wouldn't appear in the suggestions, making it impossible to narrow down the results.

To address this, we have changed the filter conditions from the second one onwards to a combo box format. This allows users to manually enter values that do not appear in the suggested list.

Example of manually entering "cpu2" and searching by pressing Enter when it doesn't appear in the options for "cpu"

Note that for the first filter condition, only the displayed options remain available as before.

Trace and span times now include milliseconds

When viewing the list or details of traces and spans, time-related outputs—such as the "Date occurred" and startTimeUnixNano—now include millisecond precision.

Time display including milliseconds at the location indicated by the arrow

APM statistics exports now include the target period in filenames and content

In the APM feature, you can export the data displayed in the "HTTP Server" and "Database" tabs. Previously, exported files did not include the target period in the filename or the content, making it difficult to identify when the data was from when reviewing it later.

To resolve this, we have made the following two changes:

1. Filename Change Filenames, which were previously fixed (e.g., apm-http-server-stats.json), will now include a date suffix indicating the target period, such as apm-http-server-stats_20260325T000000Z_20260325T235959Z.json. In this example, the period covers 2026/03/25 00:00:00 (UTC) to 2026/03/25 23:59:59 (UTC).

2. JSON Content Change When exporting in JSON format, the structure has changed. Previously, it returned a top-level array like [{ "route": "POST /query-range", ... }]. It now includes a period field for the duration and a stats field containing the original array elements.

{
  "period": { "from": "2026-03-25T00:00:00.000Z", "to": "2026-03-25T23:59:59.000Z" },
  "stats": [{ "route": "POST /query-range", ... }]
}

Please note that when copying to the clipboard in TSV format or downloading in CSV or JSON Lines format, only the filename is changed; the internal file content remains unchanged.

Added support for Kubernetes 1.35 in mackerel-container-agent

We have added Kubernetes 1.35 as a supported environment for mackerel-container-agent. Operation has been verified on Amazon EKS. Please note that Windows containers are not supported.

For usage instructions, please refer to the following help documentation:

mackerel.io

[Notice] SAML authentication login sessions will now respect the SessionNotOnOrAfter expiration

Previously, login sessions using SAML authentication had a fixed expiration of 24 hours. Moving forward, if the SessionNotOnOrAfter attribute is included in the authentication response from the IdP, that expiration time will be used. If it is not included, the default 24-hour limit will apply.

Use of SAML authentication requires a higher-tier plan. For more details on our plans, please see "Is there a paid support plan?" in Pricing - Mackerel: A Revolutionary Server Management and Monitoring Service