How to measure service methods using spring boot 2 and micrometer

Here's a little sample which should get you going. There's more variants to Timer.record() which aren't shown here. (Also: Field injection only used for brevity.) You don't have to put the called methods name into a tag. You can also make it part of the metric name itself. Just wanted to show what you could do.

Update 2018-03-12: As of Micrometer 1.0.0 a TimedAspect has been introduced so that you can also use the @Timed annotation. For now you need to register the Bean yourself. (You need to be cautious though when you have custom @Timed annotations on your Spring-MVC or Jersey resources.) This was already mentioned by Michal Stepan in a follow-up answer.

package io.github.mweirauch.micrometered.eval;

import java.util.concurrent.TimeUnit;

import org.springframework.beans.factory.annotation.Autowired;
import org.springframework.context.annotation.Bean;
import org.springframework.context.annotation.Configuration;
import org.springframework.context.annotation.EnableAspectJAutoProxy;
import org.springframework.scheduling.annotation.Scheduled;
import org.springframework.stereotype.Service;

import io.micrometer.core.annotation.Timed;
import io.micrometer.core.aop.TimedAspect;
import io.micrometer.core.instrument.MeterRegistry;
import io.micrometer.core.instrument.Timer;
import io.micrometer.core.instrument.Timer.Sample;

@Configuration
@EnableAspectJAutoProxy
public class TimingStuff {

    @Service
    static class MyService {

        @Autowired
        private MeterRegistry registry;

        public void helloManual() {
            // you can keep a ref to this; ok to call multiple times, though
            Timer timer = Timer.builder("myservice").tag("method", "manual").register(registry);

            // manually do the timing calculation
            long start = System.nanoTime();
            doSomething();
            timer.record(System.nanoTime() - start, TimeUnit.NANOSECONDS);
        }

        public void helloSupplier() {
            Timer timer = Timer.builder("myservice").tag("method", "supplier").register(registry);

            // execution of the method is timed internally
            timer.record(() -> doSomething());
        }

        public void helloSample() {
            Timer timer = Timer.builder("myservice").tag("method", "sample").register(registry);

            // records time taken between Sample creation and registering the
            // stop() with the given Timer
            Sample sample = Timer.start(registry);
            doSomething();
            sample.stop(timer);
        }

        // TimedAspect adds "class" and "method" tags
        @Timed(value = "myservice.aspect")
        public void helloAspect() {
            doSomething();
        }

        private void doSomething() {
            try {
                Thread.sleep(50);
            } catch (InterruptedException e) {
                //
            }
        }

    }

    @Autowired
    private MyService myService;

    @Bean
    TimedAspect timedAspect(MeterRegistry registry) {
        return new TimedAspect(registry);
    }

    @Scheduled(fixedRate = 1000)
    public void postConstruct() {
        myService.helloManual();
        myService.helloSupplier();
        myService.helloSample();
        myService.helloAspect();
    }

}

In case you go for Prometheus, you'd end up with something like that:

# HELP myservice_seconds  
# TYPE myservice_seconds summary
myservice_seconds_count{application="micrometered",method="manual",} 4.0
myservice_seconds_sum{application="micrometered",method="manual",} 0.200378014
myservice_seconds_max{application="micrometered",method="manual",} 0.050115291
myservice_seconds_count{application="micrometered",method="supplier",} 4.0
myservice_seconds_sum{application="micrometered",method="supplier",} 0.200393455
myservice_seconds_max{application="micrometered",method="supplier",} 0.05011635
myservice_seconds_count{application="micrometered",method="sample",} 4.0
myservice_seconds_sum{application="micrometered",method="sample",} 0.200527005
myservice_seconds_max{application="micrometered",method="sample",} 0.050250191
# HELP myservice_aspect_seconds  
# TYPE myservice_aspect_seconds summary
myservice_aspect_seconds_count{application="micrometered",class="io.github.mweirauch.micrometered.eval.TimingStuff$MyService",method="helloAspect",} 4.0
myservice_aspect_seconds_sum{application="micrometered",class="io.github.mweirauch.micrometered.eval.TimingStuff$MyService",method="helloAspect",} 0.201824272
myservice_aspect_seconds_max{application="micrometered",class="io.github.mweirauch.micrometered.eval.TimingStuff$MyService",method="helloAspect",} 0.051014296

@io.micrometer.core.annotation.Timed annotation seems to be out of order for custom calls due to reduction of scope, at it is mentioned in link in your question.

You need to manually setup an Aspect:

@Configuration
@EnableAspectJAutoProxy
public class AutoTimingConfiguration {
    @Bean
    public TimedAspect timedAspect(MeterRegistry registry) {
        return new TimedAspect(registry);
        }
}

This way method like this:

@Timed("GET_CARS")
public List<Car> getCars(){
        return Lists.newArrayList();
}

will result in GET_CARS metric in /actuator/metrics (default) endpoint.