Telemetry

The Consul agent collects various runtime metrics about the performance of different libraries and subsystems. These metrics are aggregated on a ten second interval and are retained for one minute.

To view this data, you must send a signal to the Consul process: on Unix, this is USR1 while on Windows it is BREAK. Once Consul receives the signal, it will dump the current telemetry information to the agent’s stderr.

This telemetry information can be used for debugging or otherwise getting a better view of what Consul is doing. Review the Monitoring and Metrics tutorial to learn how collect and interpret Consul data.

Additionally, if the telemetry configuration options are provided, the telemetry information will be streamed to a statsite or statsd server where it can be aggregated and flushed to Graphite or any other metrics store. For a configuration example for Telegraf, review the Monitoring with Telegraf tutorial.

This information can also be viewed with the metrics endpoint in JSON format or using Prometheus format.

Below is sample output of a telemetry dump:

  1. [2014-01-29 10:56:50 -0800 PST][G] 'consul-agent.runtime.num_goroutines': 19.000
  2. [2014-01-29 10:56:50 -0800 PST][G] 'consul-agent.runtime.alloc_bytes': 755960.000
  3. [2014-01-29 10:56:50 -0800 PST][G] 'consul-agent.runtime.malloc_count': 7550.000
  4. [2014-01-29 10:56:50 -0800 PST][G] 'consul-agent.runtime.free_count': 4387.000
  5. [2014-01-29 10:56:50 -0800 PST][G] 'consul-agent.runtime.heap_objects': 3163.000
  6. [2014-01-29 10:56:50 -0800 PST][G] 'consul-agent.runtime.total_gc_pause_ns': 1151002.000
  7. [2014-01-29 10:56:50 -0800 PST][G] 'consul-agent.runtime.total_gc_runs': 4.000
  8. [2014-01-29 10:56:50 -0800 PST][C] 'consul-agent.agent.ipc.accept': Count: 5 Sum: 5.000
  9. [2014-01-29 10:56:50 -0800 PST][C] 'consul-agent.agent.ipc.command': Count: 10 Sum: 10.000
  10. [2014-01-29 10:56:50 -0800 PST][C] 'consul-agent.serf.events': Count: 5 Sum: 5.000
  11. [2014-01-29 10:56:50 -0800 PST][C] 'consul-agent.serf.events.foo': Count: 4 Sum: 4.000
  12. [2014-01-29 10:56:50 -0800 PST][C] 'consul-agent.serf.events.baz': Count: 1 Sum: 1.000
  13. [2014-01-29 10:56:50 -0800 PST][S] 'consul-agent.memberlist.gossip': Count: 50 Min: 0.007 Mean: 0.020 Max: 0.041 Stddev: 0.007 Sum: 0.989
  14. [2014-01-29 10:56:50 -0800 PST][S] 'consul-agent.serf.queue.Intent': Count: 10 Sum: 0.000
  15. [2014-01-29 10:56:50 -0800 PST][S] 'consul-agent.serf.queue.Event': Count: 10 Min: 0.000 Mean: 2.500 Max: 5.000 Stddev: 2.121 Sum: 25.000

Key Metrics

These are some metrics emitted that can help you understand the health of your cluster at a glance. For a full list of metrics emitted by Consul, see Metrics Reference

Transaction timing

Metric NameDescription
consul.kvs.applyThis measures the time it takes to complete an update to the KV store.
consul.txn.applyThis measures the time spent applying a transaction operation.
consul.raft.applyThis counts the number of Raft transactions occurring over the interval.
consul.raft.commitTimeThis measures the time it takes to commit a new entry to the Raft log on the leader.

Why they’re important: Taken together, these metrics indicate how long it takes to complete write operations in various parts of the Consul cluster. Generally these should all be fairly consistent and no more than a few milliseconds. Sudden changes in any of the timing values could be due to unexpected load on the Consul servers, or due to problems on the servers themselves.

What to look for: Deviations (in any of these metrics) of more than 50% from baseline over the previous hour.

Leadership changes

Metric NameDescription
consul.raft.leader.lastContactMeasures the time since the leader was last able to contact the follower nodes when checking its leader lease.
consul.raft.state.candidateThis increments whenever a Consul server starts an election.
consul.raft.state.leaderThis increments whenever a Consul server becomes a leader.

Why they’re important: Normally, your Consul cluster should have a stable leader. If there are frequent elections or leadership changes, it would likely indicate network issues between the Consul servers, or that the Consul servers themselves are unable to keep up with the load.

What to look for: For a healthy cluster, you’re looking for a lastContact lower than 200ms, leader > 0 and candidate == 0. Deviations from this might indicate flapping leadership.

Autopilot

Metric NameDescription
consul.autopilot.healthyThis tracks the overall health of the local server cluster. If all servers are considered healthy by Autopilot, this will be set to 1. If any are unhealthy, this will be 0.

Why it’s important: Obviously, you want your cluster to be healthy.

What to look for: Alert if healthy is 0.

Memory usage

Metric NameDescription
consul.runtime.alloc_bytesThis measures the number of bytes allocated by the Consul process.
consul.runtime.sys_bytesThis is the total number of bytes of memory obtained from the OS.

Why they’re important: Consul keeps all of its data in memory. If Consul consumes all available memory, it will crash.

What to look for: If consul.runtime.sys_bytes exceeds 90% of total available system memory.

Garbage collection

Metric NameDescription
consul.runtime.total_gc_pause_nsNumber of nanoseconds consumed by stop-the-world garbage collection (GC) pauses since Consul started.

Why it’s important: GC pause is a “stop-the-world” event, meaning that all runtime threads are blocked until GC completes. Normally these pauses last only a few nanoseconds. But if memory usage is high, the Go runtime may GC so frequently that it starts to slow down Consul.

What to look for: Warning if total_gc_pause_ns exceeds 2 seconds/minute, critical if it exceeds 5 seconds/minute.

NOTE: total_gc_pause_ns is a cumulative counter, so in order to calculate rates (such as GC/minute), you will need to apply a function such as InfluxDB’s non_negative_difference().

Network activity - RPC Count

Metric NameDescription
consul.client.rpcIncrements whenever a Consul agent in client mode makes an RPC request to a Consul server
consul.client.rpc.exceededIncrements whenever a Consul agent in client mode makes an RPC request to a Consul server gets rate limited by that agent’s limits configuration.
consul.client.rpc.failedIncrements whenever a Consul agent in client mode makes an RPC request to a Consul server and fails.

Why they’re important: These measurements indicate the current load created from a Consul agent, including when the load becomes high enough to be rate limited. A high RPC count, especially from consul.client.rpcexceeded meaning that the requests are being rate-limited, could imply a misconfigured Consul agent.

What to look for: Sudden large changes to the consul.client.rpc metrics (greater than 50% deviation from baseline). consul.client.rpc.exceeded or consul.client.rpc.failed count > 0, as it implies that an agent is being rate-limited or fails to make an RPC request to a Consul server

When telemetry is being streamed to an external metrics store, the interval is defined to be that store’s flush interval. Otherwise, the interval can be assumed to be 10 seconds when retrieving metrics from the built-in store using the above described signals.

Metrics Reference

This is a full list of metrics emitted by Consul.

MetricDescriptionUnitType
consul.acl.blocked.service.registrationThis increments whenever a deregistration fails for a service (blocked by an ACL)requestscounter
consul.acl.blocked..registrationThis increments whenever a registration fails for an entity (check, node or service) is blocked by an ACLrequestscounter
consul.client.rpcThis increments whenever a Consul agent in client mode makes an RPC request to a Consul server. This gives a measure of how much a given agent is loading the Consul servers. Currently, this is only generated by agents in client mode, not Consul servers.requestscounter
consul.client.rpc.exceededThis increments whenever a Consul agent in client mode makes an RPC request to a Consul server gets rate limited by that agent’s limits configuration. This gives an indication that there’s an abusive application making too many requests on the agent, or that the rate limit needs to be increased. Currently, this only applies to agents in client mode, not Consul servers.rejected requestscounter
consul.client.rpc.failedThis increments whenever a Consul agent in client mode makes an RPC request to a Consul server and fails.requestscounter
consul.client.api.catalogregister.This increments whenever a Consul agent receives a catalog register request.requestscounter
consul.client.api.success.catalog_register.This increments whenever a Consul agent successfully responds to a catalog register request.requestscounter
consul.client.rpc.error.catalog_register.This increments whenever a Consul agent receives an RPC error for a catalog register request.errorscounter
consul.client.api.catalog_deregister.This increments whenever a Consul agent receives a catalog deregister request.requestscounter
consul.client.api.success.catalog_deregister.This increments whenever a Consul agent successfully responds to a catalog deregister request.requestscounter
consul.client.rpc.error.catalog_deregister.This increments whenever a Consul agent receives an RPC error for a catalog deregister request.errorscounter
consul.client.api.catalog_datacenters.This increments whenever a Consul agent receives a request to list datacenters in the catalog.requestscounter
consul.client.api.success.catalog_datacenters.This increments whenever a Consul agent successfully responds to a request to list datacenters.requestscounter
consul.client.rpc.error.catalog_datacenters.This increments whenever a Consul agent receives an RPC error for a request to list datacenters.errorscounter
consul.client.api.catalog_nodes.This increments whenever a Consul agent receives a request to list nodes from the catalog.requestscounter
consul.client.api.success.catalog_nodes.This increments whenever a Consul agent successfully responds to a request to list nodes.requestscounter
consul.client.rpc.error.catalog_nodes.This increments whenever a Consul agent receives an RPC error for a request to list nodes.errorscounter
consul.client.api.catalog_services.This increments whenever a Consul agent receives a request to list services from the catalog.requestscounter
consul.client.api.success.catalog_services.This increments whenever a Consul agent successfully responds to a request to list services.requestscounter
consul.client.rpc.error.catalog_services.This increments whenever a Consul agent receives an RPC error for a request to list services.errorscounter
consul.client.api.catalog_service_nodes.This increments whenever a Consul agent receives a request to list nodes offering a service.requestscounter
consul.client.api.success.catalog_service_nodes.This increments whenever a Consul agent successfully responds to a request to list nodes offering a service.requestscounter
consul.client.rpc.error.catalog_service_nodes.This increments whenever a Consul agent receives an RPC error for a request to list nodes offering a service.errorscounter
consul.client.api.catalog_node_services.This increments whenever a Consul agent receives a request to list services registered in a node.requestscounter
consul.client.api.success.catalog_node_services.This increments whenever a Consul agent successfully responds to a request to list services in a node.requestscounter
consul.client.rpc.error.catalog_node_services.This increments whenever a Consul agent receives an RPC error for a request to list services in a node.errorscounter
consul.client.api.catalog_gateway_services.This increments whenever a Consul agent receives a request to list services associated with a gateway.requestscounter
consul.client.api.success.catalog_gateway_services.This increments whenever a Consul agent successfully responds to a request to list services associated with a gateway.requestscounter
consul.client.rpc.error.catalog_gateway_services.This increments whenever a Consul agent receives an RPC error for a request to list services associated with a gateway.errorscounter
consul.runtime.num_goroutinesThis tracks the number of running goroutines and is a general load pressure indicator. This may burst from time to time but should return to a steady state value.number of goroutinesgauge
consul.runtime.alloc_bytesThis measures the number of bytes allocated by the Consul process. This may burst from time to time but should return to a steady state value.bytesgauge
consul.runtime.heap_objectsThis measures the number of objects allocated on the heap and is a general memory pressure indicator. This may burst from time to time but should return to a steady state value.number of objectsgauge
consul.acl.cache_hitThe number of ACL cache hits.hitscounter
consul.acl.cache_missThe number of ACL cache misses.missescounter
consul.acl.replication_hitThe number of ACL replication cache hits (when not running in the ACL datacenter).hitscounter
consul.dns.stale_queriesThis increments when an agent serves a query within the allowed stale threshold.queriescounter
consul.dns.ptr_query.This measures the time spent handling a reverse DNS query for the given node.mstimer
consul.dns.domain_query.This measures the time spent handling a domain query for the given node.mstimer
consul.http..This tracks how long it takes to service the given HTTP request for the given verb and path. Paths do not include details like service or key names, for these an underscore will be present as a placeholder (eg. consul.http.GET.v1.kv.)mstimer

Server Health

These metrics are used to monitor the health of the Consul servers.

MetricDescriptionUnitType
consul.raft.fsm.snapshotThis metric measures the time taken by the FSM to record the current state for the snapshot.mstimer
consul.raft.fsm.applyThis metric gives the number of logs committed since the last interval.commit logs / intervalcounter
consul.raft.commitNumLogsThis metric measures the count of logs processed for application to the FSM in a single batch.logsgauge
consul.raft.fsm.enqueueThis metric measures the amount of time to enqueue a batch of logs for the FSM to apply.mstimer
consul.raft.fsm.restoreThis metric measures the time taken by the FSM to restore its state from a snapshot.mstimer
consul.raft.snapshot.createThis metric measures the time taken to initialize the snapshot process.mstimer
consul.raft.snapshot.persistThis metric measures the time taken to dump the current snapshot taken by the Consul agent to the disk.mstimer
consul.raft.snapshot.takeSnapshotThis metric measures the total time involved in taking the current snapshot (creating one and persisting it) by the Consul agent.mstimer
consul.raft.replication.heartbeatThis metric measures the time taken to invoke appendEntries on a peer, so that it doesn’t timeout on a periodic basis.mstimer
consul.serf.snapshot.appendLineThis metric measures the time taken by the Consul agent to append an entry into the existing log.mstimer
consul.serf.snapshot.compactThis metric measures the time taken by the Consul agent to compact a log. This operation occurs only when the snapshot becomes large enough to justify the compaction .mstimer
consul.raft.state.leaderThis increments whenever a Consul server becomes a leader. If there are frequent leadership changes this may be indication that the servers are overloaded and aren’t meeting the soft real-time requirements for Raft, or that there are networking problems between the servers.leadership transitions / intervalcounter
consul.raft.state.candidateThis increments whenever a Consul server starts an election. If this increments without a leadership change occurring it could indicate that a single server is overloaded or is experiencing network connectivity issues.election attempts / intervalcounter
consul.raft.applyThis counts the number of Raft transactions occurring over the interval, which is a general indicator of the write load on the Consul servers.raft transactions / intervalcounter
consul.raft.barrierThis metric counts the number of times the agent has started the barrier i.e the number of times it has issued a blocking call, to ensure that the agent has all the pending operations that were queued, to be applied to the agent’s FSM.blocks / intervalcounter
consul.raft.verify_leaderThis metric counts the number of times an agent checks whether it is still the leader or notchecks / intervalCounter
consul.raft.restoreThis metric counts the number of times the restore operation has been performed by the agent. Here, restore refers to the action of raft consuming an external snapshot to restore its state.operation invoked / intervalcounter
consul.raft.commitTimeThis measures the time it takes to commit a new entry to the Raft log on the leader.mstimer
consul.raft.leader.dispatchLogThis measures the time it takes for the leader to write log entries to disk.mstimer
consul.raft.leader.dispatchNumLogsThis metric measures the number of logs committed to disk in a batch.logsgauge
consul.raft.replication.appendEntriesThis measures the time it takes to replicate log entries to followers. This is a general indicator of the load pressure on the Consul servers, as well as the performance of the communication between the servers.mstimer
consul.raft.state.followerThis metric counts the number of times an agent has entered the follower mode. This happens when a new agent joins the cluster or after the end of a leader election.follower state entered / intervalcounter
consul.raft.transistion.heartbeat_timeoutThis metric gives the number of times an agent has transitioned to the Candidate state, after receive no heartbeat messages from the last known leader.timeouts / intervalcounter
consul.raft.restoreUserSnapshotThis metric measures the time taken by the agent to restore the FSM state from a user’s snapshotmstimer
consul.raft.rpc.processHeartBeatThis metric measures the time taken to process a heartbeat request.mstimer
consul.raft.rpc.appendEntriesThis metric measures the time taken to process an append entries RPC call from an agent.mstimer
consul.raft.rpc.appendEntries.storeLogsThis metric measures the time taken to add any outstanding logs for an agent, since the last appendEntries was invokedmstimer
consul.raft.rpc.appendEntries.processLogsThis metric measures the time taken to process the outstanding log entries of an agent.mstimer
consul.raft.rpc.requestVoteThis metric measures the time taken to process the request vote RPC call.mstimer
consul.raft.rpc.installSnapshotThis metric measures the time taken to process the installSnapshot RPC call. This metric should only be seen on agents which are currently in the follower state.mstimer
consul.raft.replication.appendEntries.rpcThis metric measures the time taken by the append entries RFC, to replicate the log entries of a leader agent onto its follower agent(s)mstimer
consul.raft.replication.appendEntries.logsThis metric measures the number of logs replicated to an agent, to bring it up to speed with the leader’s logs.logs appended/ intervalcounter
consul.raft.leader.lastContactThis will only be emitted by the Raft leader and measures the time since the leader was last able to contact the follower nodes when checking its leader lease. It can be used as a measure for how stable the Raft timing is and how close the leader is to timing out its lease.The lease timeout is 500 ms times the raft_multiplier configuration, so this telemetry value should not be getting close to that configured value, otherwise the Raft timing is marginal and might need to be tuned, or more powerful servers might be needed. See the Server Performance guide for more details.mstimer
consul.acl.applyThis measures the time it takes to complete an update to the ACL store.mstimer
consul.acl.faultThis measures the time it takes to fault in the rules for an ACL during a cache miss.mstimer
consul.acl.fetchRemoteACLsThis measures the time it takes to fetch remote ACLs during replication.mstimer
consul.acl.updateLocalACLsThis measures the time it takes to apply replication changes to the local ACL store.mstimer
consul.acl.replicateACLsThis measures the time it takes to do one pass of the ACL replication algorithm.mstimer
consul.acl.resolveTokenThis measures the time it takes to resolve an ACL token.mstimer
consul.rpc.accept_connThis increments when a server accepts an RPC connection.connectionscounter
consul.catalog.registerThis measures the time it takes to complete a catalog register operation.mstimer
consul.catalog.deregisterThis measures the time it takes to complete a catalog deregister operation.mstimer
consul.fsm.registerThis measures the time it takes to apply a catalog register operation to the FSM.mstimer
consul.fsm.deregisterThis measures the time it takes to apply a catalog deregister operation to the FSM.mstimer
consul.fsm.acl.This measures the time it takes to apply the given ACL operation to the FSM.mstimer
consul.fsm.session.This measures the time it takes to apply the given session operation to the FSM.mstimer
consul.fsm.kvs.This measures the time it takes to apply the given KV operation to the FSM.mstimer
consul.fsm.tombstone.This measures the time it takes to apply the given tombstone operation to the FSM.mstimer
consul.fsm.coordinate.batch-updateThis measures the time it takes to apply the given batch coordinate update to the FSM.mstimer
consul.fsm.prepared-query.This measures the time it takes to apply the given prepared query update operation to the FSM.mstimer
consul.fsm.txnThis measures the time it takes to apply the given transaction update to the FSM.mstimer
consul.fsm.autopilotThis measures the time it takes to apply the given autopilot update to the FSM.mstimer
consul.fsm.persistThis measures the time it takes to persist the FSM to a raft snapshot.mstimer
consul.kvs.applyThis measures the time it takes to complete an update to the KV store.mstimer
consul.leader.barrierThis measures the time spent waiting for the raft barrier upon gaining leadership.mstimer
consul.leader.reconcileThis measures the time spent updating the raft store from the serf member information.mstimer
consul.leader.reconcileMemberThis measures the time spent updating the raft store for a single serf member’s information.mstimer
consul.leader.reapTombstonesThis measures the time spent clearing tombstones.mstimer
consul.prepared-query.applyThis measures the time it takes to apply a prepared query update.mstimer
consul.prepared-query.explainThis measures the time it takes to process a prepared query explain request.mstimer
consul.prepared-query.executeThis measures the time it takes to process a prepared query execute request.mstimer
consul.prepared-query.execute_remoteThis measures the time it takes to process a prepared query execute request that was forwarded to another datacenter.mstimer
consul.rpc.raft_handoffThis increments when a server accepts a Raft-related RPC connection.connectionscounter
consul.rpc.request_errorThis increments when a server returns an error from an RPC request.errorscounter
consul.rpc.requestThis increments when a server receives a Consul-related RPC request.requestscounter
consul.rpc.queryThis increments when a server receives a new blocking RPC request, indicating the rate of new blocking query calls. See consul.rpc.queries_blocking for the current number of in-flight blocking RPC calls. This metric changed in 1.7.0 to only increment on the the start of a query. The rate of queries will appear lower, but is more accurate.queriescounter
consul.rpc.queries_blockingThis shows the current number of in-flight blocking queries the server is handling.queriesgauge
consul.rpc.cross-dcThis increments when a server sends a (potentially blocking) cross datacenter RPC query.queriescounter
consul.rpc.consistentReadThis measures the time spent confirming that a consistent read can be performed.mstimer
consul.session.applyThis measures the time spent applying a session update.mstimer
consul.session.renewThis measures the time spent renewing a session.mstimer
consul.session_ttl.invalidateThis measures the time spent invalidating an expired session.mstimer
consul.txn.applyThis measures the time spent applying a transaction operation.mstimer
consul.txn.readThis measures the time spent returning a read transaction.mstimer

Cluster Health

These metrics give insight into the health of the cluster as a whole.

MetricDescriptionUnitType
consul.memberlist.degraded.probeThis metric counts the number of times the agent has performed failure detection on another agent at a slower probe rate. The agent uses its own health metric as an indicator to perform this action. (If its health score is low, means that the node is healthy, and vice versa.)probes / intervalcounter
consul.memberlist.degraded.timeoutThis metric counts the number of times an agent was marked as a dead node, whilst not getting enough confirmations from a randomly selected list of agent nodes in an agent’s membership.occurrence / intervalcounter
consul.memberlist.msg.deadThis metric counts the number of times an agent has marked another agent to be a dead node.messages / intervalcounter
consul.memberlist.health.scoreThis metric describes a node’s perception of its own health based on how well it is meeting the soft real-time requirements of the protocol. This metric ranges from 0 to 8, where 0 indicates “totally healthy”. This health score is used to scale the time between outgoing probes, and higher scores translate into longer probing intervals. For more details see section IV of the Lifeguard paper: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1707.00788.pdfscoregauge
consul.memberlist.msg.suspectThis increments when an agent suspects another as failed when executing random probes as part of the gossip protocol. These can be an indicator of overloaded agents, network problems, or configuration errors where agents can not connect to each other on the required ports.suspect messages received / intervalcounter
consul.memberlist.tcp.acceptThis metric counts the number of times an agent has accepted an incoming TCP stream connection.connections accepted / intervalcounter
consul.memberlist.udp.sent/receivedThis metric measures the total number of bytes sent/received by an agent through the UDP protocol.bytes sent or bytes received / intervalcounter
consul.memberlist.tcp.connectThis metric counts the number of times an agent has initiated a push/pull sync with an other agent.push/pull initiated / intervalcounter
consul.memberlist.tcp.sentThis metric measures the total number of bytes sent by an agent through the TCP protocolbytes sent / intervalcounter
consul.memberlist.gossipThis metric gives the number of gossips (messages) broadcasted to a set of randomly selected nodes.messages / Intervalcounter
consul.memberlist.msg_aliveThis metric counts the number of alive agents, that the agent has mapped out so far, based on the message information given by the network layer.nodes / Intervalcounter
consul.memberlist.msg_deadThis metric gives the number of dead agents, that the agent has mapped out so far, based on the message information given by the network layer.nodes / Intervalcounter
consul.memberlist.msg_suspectThis metric gives the number of suspect nodes, that the agent has mapped out so far, based on the message information given by the network layer.nodes / Intervalcounter
consul.memberlist.probeNodeThis metric measures the time taken to perform a single round of failure detection on a select agent.nodes / Intervalcounter
consul.memberlist.pushPullNodeThis metric measures the number of agents that have exchanged state with this agent.nodes / Intervalcounter
consul.serf.member.failedThis increments when an agent is marked dead. This can be an indicator of overloaded agents, network problems, or configuration errors where agents cannot connect to each other on the required ports.failures / intervalcounter
consul.serf.member.flapAvailable in Consul 0.7 and later, this increments when an agent is marked dead and then recovers within a short time period. This can be an indicator of overloaded agents, network problems, or configuration errors where agents cannot connect to each other on the required ports.flaps / intervalcounter
consul.serf.member.joinThis increments when an agent joins the cluster. If an agent flapped or failed this counter also increments when it re-joins.joins / intervalcounter
consul.serf.member.leftThis increments when an agent leaves the cluster.leaves / intervalcounter
consul.serf.eventsThis increments when an agent processes an event. Consul uses events internally so there may be additional events showing in telemetry. There are also a per-event counters emitted as consul.serf.events..events / intervalcounter
consul.autopilot.failure_toleranceThis tracks the number of voting servers that the cluster can lose while continuing to function.serversgauge
consul.autopilot.healthyThis tracks the overall health of the local server cluster. If all servers are considered healthy by Autopilot, this will be set to 1. If any are unhealthy, this will be 0.booleangauge
consul.session_ttl.activeThis tracks the active number of sessions being tracked.sessionsgauge
consul.catalog.service.query.This increments for each catalog query for the given service.queriescounter
consul.catalog.service.query-tag..This increments for each catalog query for the given service with the given tag.queriescounter
consul.catalog.service.query-tags..This increments for each catalog query for the given service with the given tags.queriescounter
consul.catalog.service.not-found.This increments for each catalog query where the given service could not be found.queriescounter
consul.health.service.query.This increments for each health query for the given service.queriescounter
consul.health.service.query-tag..This increments for each health query for the given service with the given tag.queriescounter
consul.health.service.query-tags..This increments for each health query for the given service with the given tags.queriescounter
consul.health.service.not-found.This increments for each health query where the given service could not be found.queriescounter

Connect Built-in Proxy Metrics

Consul Connect’s built-in proxy is by default configured to log metrics to the same sink as the agent that starts it.

When running in this mode it emits some basic metrics. These will be expanded upon in the future.

All metrics are prefixed with consul.proxy.<proxied-service-id> to distinguish between multiple proxies on a given host. The table below use web as an example service name for brevity.

Labels

Most labels have a dst label and some have a src label. When using metrics sinks and timeseries stores that support labels or tags, these allow aggregating the connections by service name.

Assuming all services are using a managed built-in proxy, you can get a complete overview of both number of open connections and bytes sent and received between all services by aggregating over these metrics.

For example aggregating over all upstream (i.e. outbound) connections which have both src and dst labels, you can get a sum of all the bandwidth in and out of a given service or the total number of connections between two services.

Metrics Reference

The standard go runtime metrics are exported by go-metrics as with Consul agent. The table below describes the additional metrics exported by the proxy.

MetricDescriptionUnitType
consul.proxy.web.runtime.*The same go runtime metrics as documented for the agent above.mixedmixed
consul.proxy.web.inbound.connsShows the current number of connections open from inbound requests to the proxy. Where supported a dst label is added indicating the service name the proxy represents.connectionsgauge
consul.proxy.web.inbound.rx_bytesThis increments by the number of bytes received from an inbound client connection. Where supported a dst label is added indicating the service name the proxy represents.bytescounter
consul.proxy.web.inbound.tx_bytesThis increments by the number of bytes transferred to an inbound client connection. Where supported a dst label is added indicating the service name the proxy represents.bytescounter
consul.proxy.web.upstream.connsShows the current number of connections open from a proxy instance to an upstream. Where supported a src label is added indicating the service name the proxy represents, and a dst label is added indicating the service name the upstream is connecting to.connectionsgauge
consul.proxy.web.inbound.rx_bytesThis increments by the number of bytes received from an upstream connection. Where supported a src label is added indicating the service name the proxy represents, and a dst label is added indicating the service name the upstream is connecting to.bytescounter
consul.proxy.web.inbound.tx_bytesThis increments by the number of bytes transferred to an upstream connection. Where supported a src label is added indicating the service name the proxy represents, and a dst label is added indicating the service name the upstream is connecting to.bytescounter