All available collectors are listed in the above JSON. There are currently three sinks supported `influxdb`, `nats` and `stdout`. The `interval` defines how often the metrics should be read and send to the sink. The `duration` tells collectors how long one measurement has to take. An example for this is the `likwid` collector which starts the hardware performance counter, waits for `duration` seconds and stops the counters again. For most systems, the `likwid` collector has to do two measurements, thus `interval` must be larger than two times `duration`. With `receiver`, the collector can be used as a router by receiving metrics and forwarding them to the configured sink. There are currently only types `none` (for no receiver) and `nats`.
The metric collector sends (and receives) metric in the [InfluxDB line protocol](https://docs.influxdata.com/influxdb/cloud/reference/syntax/line-protocol/) as it provides flexibility while providing a separation between tags (like index columns in relational databases) and fields (like data columns).
There is a single timer loop that triggers all collectors serially, collects the collectors' data and sends the metrics to the sink. The sinks currently use blocking APIs.
The receiver runs as a go routine side-by-side with the timer loop and asynchronously forwards received metrics to the sink.
