[Metricbeat] googlecloud compute metricset reports error when there is no metric

[kaiyan-sheng]

When querying metrics from a region/zone which doesn't have any compute monitoring metrics, an error message will be stored into error.messsage in a separate event showing:

{
  "_index": "metricbeat-8.0.0-2020.03.06-000001",
  "_type": "_doc",
  "_id": "4C2psHABO58ZQOV97t5j",
  "_version": 1,
  "_score": null,
  "_source": {
    "@timestamp": "2020-03-06T16:24:50.143Z",
    "ecs": {
      "version": "1.4.0"
    },
    "host": {
      "name": "KaiyanMacBookPro",
      "hostname": "KaiyanMacBookPro",
      "architecture": "x86_64",
      "os": {
        "version": "10.13.6",
        "family": "darwin",
        "name": "Mac OS X",
        "kernel": "17.7.0",
        "build": "17G10021",
        "platform": "darwin"
      },
      "id": "9C7FAB7B-29D1-5926-8E84-158A9CA3E25D",
      "ip": [
        "fe80::18da:9553:5e03:fd2d",
        "192.168.0.5",
        "fe80::6c96:28ff:fe6d:fcdc",
        "fe80::1b53:9dee:f305:e2c7",
        "fe80::aede:48ff:fe00:1122"
      ],
      "mac": [
        "f2:18:98:75:78:55",
        "f0:18:98:75:78:55",
        "02:18:98:75:78:55",
        "6e:96:28:6d:fc:dc",
        "c6:00:e4:40:f6:04",
        "c6:00:e4:40:f6:01",
        "c6:00:e4:40:f6:00",
        "c6:00:e4:40:f6:05",
        "c6:00:e4:40:f6:01",
        "ac:de:48:00:11:22"
      ]
    },
    "agent": {
      "ephemeral_id": "af030534-617b-4ebc-a7b6-8d260acedbbf",
      "hostname": "KaiyanMacBookPro",
      "id": "23fd6ee9-2255-43f3-9565-78a051337c04",
      "version": "8.0.0",
      "type": "metricbeat"
    },
    "event": {
      "module": "googlecloud",
      "duration": 409383008,
      "dataset": "googlecloud.compute"
    },
    "metricset": {
      "name": "compute",
      "period": 300000
    },
    "service": {
      "type": "googlecloud"
    },
    "error": {
      "message": "error trying to get metrics for project 'elastic-observability' and zone '' or region 'us-central1': service returned 0 metrics"
    }
  },
  "fields": {
    "@timestamp": [
      "2020-03-06T16:24:50.143Z"
    ]
  },
  "sort": [
    1583511890143
  ]
}

My opinion is, this can be a warning log message but doesn't have to be in its separate event.

[elasticmachine]

Pinging @elastic/integrations-platforms (Team:Platforms)

[exekias]

I agree, I wonder even if the warning is necessary. Having that there was no error, this just mean there are no data points for that metric