support metric whitelists

[cburroughs]

I'd like to be able to supply a whitelist of metrics (as an alternative to the SKIP_LIST blacklist).

Currently skyline usually finds around 2k anomalies out of about 500k metrics. That is totally awesome to look through but too much for 'important things' to jump out. I'd like to run a parallel skyline that only looks at a smaller set of metrics that are tied to existing fault-detection/dashboards.

[astanway]

I'm assuming you're using the default Graphite setup? Why not set up relay rules according to what you want, so only those metrics make it in the first place?

[cburroughs]

carbon-relay falls in the "important stuff I'd prefer not to restart every time a config somewhere else changed category". Also having several hundred

[name]
[pattern = foo
servers = alt-skyline
continue=true

blocks seems hacky. If there isn't much other interest I can work on a minimally invasive patch.

[astanway]

Did you ever make that patch? A whitelist mode actually sounds reasonable to me - it should be pretty simple to implement.