Telemetry

The Vault server process collects various runtime metrics about the performance of different libraries and subsystems. These metrics are aggregated on a 10-second interval and retained for one minute in memory. High-cardinality metrics, like vault.secret.kv.count, report every 10 minutes or at an interval configured with in the telemetry stanza.

Telemetry from Vault must be streamed and stored in metrics aggregation software to monitor Vault and collect durable metrics.

Vault uses the go-metrics package to export telemetry and supports the following aggregation agents for time-series monitoring:

Config prefix	Name	Company
`circonus`	Circonus	Circonus
`dogstatsd`	DogStatsD	Datadog
`prometheus`	Prometheus	Prometheus / Open source
`stackdriver`	Cloud Operations	Google
`statsd`	Statsd	Open source
`statsite`	Statsite	Open source

Start with key health metrics

The Well-Architected Framework documentation includes a best practices guide on key Vault metrics for common health checks. We recommend reviewing the key metric recommendations to identify metrics you may want to start monitoring immediately.

Working with raw telemetry data

You can view raw telemetry data for debugging purposes by interrupting the Vault process with USR1 (on *nix) or BREAK (on Windows). When the Vault process receives this signal, it dumps telemetry data for the last 10 seconds to stderr.

Raw telemetry data is prefixed with the relevant metric type:

[C] indicates the metric is a counter.
[G] indicates the metric is a gauge.
[S] indicates the metric is a summary.

Example raw telemetry dump

[2017-12-19 20:37:50 +0000 UTC][G] 'vault.7f320e57f9fe.expire.num_leases': 5100.000
[2017-12-19 20:37:50 +0000 UTC][G] 'vault.7f320e57f9fe.runtime.num_goroutines': 39.000
[2017-12-19 20:37:50 +0000 UTC][G] 'vault.7f320e57f9fe.runtime.sys_bytes': 222746880.000
[2017-12-19 20:37:50 +0000 UTC][G] 'vault.7f320e57f9fe.runtime.malloc_count': 109189192.000
[2017-12-19 20:37:50 +0000 UTC][G] 'vault.7f320e57f9fe.runtime.free_count': 108408240.000
[2017-12-19 20:37:50 +0000 UTC][G] 'vault.7f320e57f9fe.runtime.heap_objects': 780953.000
[2017-12-19 20:37:50 +0000 UTC][G] 'vault.7f320e57f9fe.runtime.total_gc_runs': 232.000
[2017-12-19 20:37:50 +0000 UTC][G] 'vault.7f320e57f9fe.runtime.alloc_bytes': 72954392.000
[2017-12-19 20:37:50 +0000 UTC][G] 'vault.7f320e57f9fe.runtime.total_gc_pause_ns': 150293024.000
[2017-12-19 20:37:50 +0000 UTC][S] 'vault.merkle.flushDirty': Count: 100 Min: 0.008 Mean: 0.027 Max: 0.183 Stddev: 0.024 Sum: 2.681 LastUpdated: 2017-12-19 20:37:59.848733035 +0000 UTC m=+10463.692105920
[2017-12-19 20:37:50 +0000 UTC][S] 'vault.merkle.saveCheckpoint': Count: 4 Min: 0.021 Mean: 0.054 Max: 0.110 Stddev: 0.039 Sum: 0.217 LastUpdated: 2017-12-19 20:37:57.048458148 +0000 UTC m=+10460.891835029
[2017-12-19 20:38:00 +0000 UTC][G] 'vault.7f320e57f9fe.runtime.alloc_bytes': 73326136.000
[2017-12-19 20:38:00 +0000 UTC][G] 'vault.7f320e57f9fe.runtime.sys_bytes': 222746880.000
[2017-12-19 20:38:00 +0000 UTC][G] 'vault.7f320e57f9fe.runtime.malloc_count': 109195904.000
[2017-12-19 20:38:00 +0000 UTC][G] 'vault.7f320e57f9fe.runtime.free_count': 108409568.000
[2017-12-19 20:38:00 +0000 UTC][G] 'vault.7f320e57f9fe.runtime.heap_objects': 786342.000
[2017-12-19 20:38:00 +0000 UTC][G] 'vault.7f320e57f9fe.runtime.total_gc_pause_ns': 150293024.000
[2017-12-19 20:38:00 +0000 UTC][G] 'vault.7f320e57f9fe.expire.num_leases': 5100.000
[2017-12-19 20:38:00 +0000 UTC][G] 'vault.7f320e57f9fe.runtime.num_goroutines': 39.000
[2017-12-19 20:38:00 +0000 UTC][G] 'vault.7f320e57f9fe.runtime.total_gc_runs': 232.000
[2017-12-19 20:38:00 +0000 UTC][S] 'vault.route.rollback.consul-': Count: 1 Sum: 0.013 LastUpdated: 2017-12-19 20:38:01.968471579 +0000 UTC m=+10465.811842067
[2017-12-19 20:38:00 +0000 UTC][S] 'vault.rollback.attempt.consul-': Count: 1 Sum: 0.073 LastUpdated: 2017-12-19 20:38:01.968502743 +0000 UTC m=+10465.811873131
[2017-12-19 20:38:00 +0000 UTC][S] 'vault.rollback.attempt.pki-': Count: 1 Sum: 0.070 LastUpdated: 2017-12-19 20:38:01.96867005 +0000 UTC m=+10465.812041936
[2017-12-19 20:38:00 +0000 UTC][S] 'vault.route.rollback.auth-app-id-': Count: 1 Sum: 0.012 LastUpdated: 2017-12-19 20:38:01.969146401 +0000 UTC m=+10465.812516689
[2017-12-19 20:38:00 +0000 UTC][S] 'vault.rollback.attempt.identity-': Count: 1 Sum: 0.063 LastUpdated: 2017-12-19 20:38:01.968029888 +0000 UTC m=+10465.811400276
[2017-12-19 20:38:00 +0000 UTC][S] 'vault.rollback.attempt.database-': Count: 1 Sum: 0.066 LastUpdated: 2017-12-19 20:38:01.969394215 +0000 UTC m=+10465.812764603
[2017-12-19 20:38:00 +0000 UTC][S] 'vault.barrier.get': Count: 16 Min: 0.010 Mean: 0.015 Max: 0.031 Stddev: 0.005 Sum: 0.237 LastUpdated: 2017-12-19 20:38:01.983268118 +0000 UTC m=+10465.826637008
[2017-12-19 20:38:00 +0000 UTC][S] 'vault.merkle.flushDirty': Count: 100 Min: 0.006 Mean: 0.024 Max: 0.098 Stddev: 0.019 Sum: 2.386 LastUpdated: 2017-12-19 20:38:09.848158309 +0000 UTC m=+10473.691527099