Prometheus metrics

Felix can be configured to report a number of metrics through Prometheus. See the configuration reference for how to enable metrics reporting.

Metric reference

Felix specific

Felix exports a number of Prometheus metrics. The current set is as follows. Since some metrics are tied to particular implementation choices inside Felix we can't make any hard guarantees that metrics will persist across releases. However, we aim not to make any spurious changes to existing metrics.

Cluster-wide metrics

Name	Description
felix_cluster_num_host_endpoints	Total number of host endpoints cluster-wide.
felix_cluster_num_hosts	Total number of Calico hosts in the cluster.
felix_cluster_num_policies	Total number of policies in the cluster.
felix_cluster_num_profiles	Total number of profiles in the cluster.
felix_cluster_num_tiers	Total number of Calico tiers in the cluster.
felix_cluster_num_workload_endpoints	Total number of workload endpoints cluster-wide.

General metrics

Name	Description
felix_active_local_endpoints	Number of active endpoints (workload+host) on this host.
felix_active_local_policies	Number of active policies on this host. Only "active" policies that match a local endpoint have a significant cost.
felix_active_local_selectors	Number of active selectors on this host. Only "active" rule src/dest selectors have significant cost.
felix_exec_time_micros	Summary of time taken to fork/exec child processes.
felix_log_errors	Number of errors encountered while making normal "process" logs (for example to stdout).
felix_logs_dropped	Number of logs dropped because the output stream was blocked.

Calculation graph metrics

The calculation graph processes updates from the datastore to calculate the active endpoints/policy/etc for this node.

Name	Description
felix_calc_graph_output_events	Number of events emitted by the calculation graph.
felix_calc_graph_update_time_seconds	Seconds to update calculation graph for each datastore OnUpdate call.
felix_calc_graph_updates_processed	Number of datastore updates processed by the calculation graph.

Common dataplane metrics

Name	Description
felix_resyncs_started	Number of times Felix has started resyncing with the datastore. (Not meaningful in a Typha deployment.)
felix_resync_state	Current datastore-dataplane synchronisation state, encoded as a number 1="waiting for datastore", 2="resync in progress", 3="in sync with datastore".
felix_int_dataplane_addr_msg_batch_size	Number of interface address messages processed in each batch. Higher values indicate we're doing more batching to try to keep up.
felix_int_dataplane_apply_time_seconds	Time in seconds that it took to apply a dataplane update.
felix_int_dataplane_failures	Number of times dataplane updates failed and will be retried.
felix_int_dataplane_iface_msg_batch_size	Number of interface state messages processed in each batch. Higher values indicate we're doing more batching to try to keep up.
felix_int_dataplane_messages	Number dataplane messages by type.
felix_int_dataplane_msg_batch_size	Number of messages processed in each batch. Higher values indicate we're doing more batching to try to keep up.
felix_route_table_list_seconds	Time taken to list all the interfaces during a resync.
felix_route_table_per_iface_sync_seconds	Time taken to sync each interface

iptables dataplane metrics

Name	Description
felix_iptables_chains	Number of active iptables chains.
felix_iptables_lines_executed	Number of iptables rule updates executed.
felix_iptables_lock_acquire_secs	Time taken to acquire the iptables lock.
felix_iptables_lock_retries	Number of times the iptables lock was already held and felix had to retry to acquire it.
felix_iptables_restore_calls	Number of iptables-restore calls.
felix_iptables_restore_errors	Number of iptables-restore errors.
felix_iptables_rules	Number of active iptables rules.
felix_iptables_save_calls	Number of iptables-save calls.
felix_iptables_save_errors	Number of iptables-save errors.

BPF dataplane metrics

Name	Description
felix_bpf_dataplane_endpoints	Number of BPF endpoints managed in the dataplane.
felix_bpf_dirty_dataplane_endpoints	Number of BPF endpoints managed in the dataplane that are left dirty after a failure.
felix_bpf_happy_dataplane_endpoints	Number of BPF endpoints that are successfully programmed.
felix_bpf_num_ip_sets	Number of BPF IP sets managed in the dataplane.

Prometheus metrics are self-documenting, with metrics turned on, curl can be used to list the metrics along with their help text and type information.

curl -s http://localhost:9091/metrics | head

Example response:

# HELP felix_active_local_endpoints Number of active endpoints on this host.
# TYPE felix_active_local_endpoints gauge
felix_active_local_endpoints 91
# HELP felix_active_local_policies Number of active policies on this host.
# TYPE felix_active_local_policies gauge
felix_active_local_policies 0
# HELP felix_active_local_selectors Number of active selectors on this host.
# TYPE felix_active_local_selectors gauge
felix_active_local_selectors 82
...

Label indexing metrics

The label index is a subcomponent of Felix that is responsible for calculating the set of endpoints and network sets that match each selector that is in an active policy rule. Policy rules are active on a particular node if the policy they belong to selects a workload or host endpoint on that node with its top-level selector (in spec.selector). Inactive policies have minimal CPU cost because their selectors do not get indexed.

Since the label index must match the active selectors against all endpoints and network sets in the cluster, its performance is critical and it supports various optimizations to minimize CPU usage. Its metrics can be used to check that the optimizations are active for your policy set.

felix_label_index_num_endpoints

Reports the total number of endpoints (and similar objects such as network sets) being tracked by the index. This should match the number of endpoints and network sets in your cluster.

felix_label_index_num_active_selectors{optimized="true|false"}

Reports the total number of active selectors, broken into optimized="true" and optimized="false" sub-totals.

The optimized="true" total tracks the number of selectors that the label index was able to optimize. Those selectors should be calculated efficiently even in clusters with hundreds of thousands of endpoints. In general the CPU used to calculate them should be proportional to the number of endpoints that match them and the churn rate of those endpoints.

The optimized="false" total tracks the number of selectors that could not be optimized. Unoptimized selectors are much more costly to calculate; the CPU used to calculate them is proportional to the number of endpoints in the cluster and their churn rate. It is generally OK to have a handful of unoptimized selectors, but if many selectors are unoptimized the CPU usage can be substantial at high scale.

For more information on writing selectors that can be optimized, see the this section of the NetworkPolicy reference.

felix_label_index_selector_evals{result="true|false"}

Counts the total number of times that a selector was evaluated vs an endpoint to determine if it matches, broken down by match (true) or no-match (false). The ratio of match to no-match shows how effective the selector indexing optimizations are for your policy set. The more effectively the label index can optimize the selectors, the fewer "no-match" results it will report relative to "match".

If you have more than a handful of active selectors and felix_label_index_selector_evals{result="false"} is many times felix_label_index_selector_evals{result="true"} then it is likely that some selectors in the policy set are not being optimized effectively.

felix_label_index_strategy_evals{strategy="..."}

This is a technical statistic that shows how many times the label index has employed each optimization strategy that it has available. The strategies will likely evolve over time but, at time of writing, they are as follows:

• endpoint-full-scan: the least efficient fall back strategy for unoptimized selectors. The index scanned all endpoints to find the matches for a selector.

• endpoint|parent-no-match: the most efficient strategy; the index was able to prove that nothing matched the selector so it was able to skip the scan entirely.

• endpoint|parent-single-value: the label index was able to limit the scan to only those endpoints/parents that have a particular label and value combination. For example, selector label == "value" would only scan items that had exactly that label set to "value".

• endpoint|parent-multi-value: the label index was able to limit the scan to only those endpoints/parents that have a particular label and one of a few values. For example, selector label in {"a", "b") would only scan items that had exactly that label with one of the given values.

• endpoint|parent-label-name: the label index was able to limit the scan to only those endpoints/parents that hava a particular label (but was unable to limit it to a particular subset of values). For example, has(label) would result in that kind of scan.

Terminology: here "endpoint" means "endpoint or NetworkSet" and "parent" is Felix's internal name for resources like Kubernetes Namespaces. A "parent" scan means that the label index scanned all endpoints that have a parent matching the strategy.

CPU / memory metrics

Felix also exports the default set of metrics that Prometheus makes available. Currently, those include:

Name	Description
go_gc_duration_seconds	A summary of the GC invocation durations.
go_goroutines	Number of goroutines that currently exist.
go_memstats_alloc_bytes	Number of bytes allocated and still in use.
go_memstats_alloc_bytes_total	Total number of bytes allocated, even if freed.
go_memstats_buck_hash_sys_bytes	Number of bytes used by the profiling bucket hash table.
go_memstats_frees_total	Total number of frees.
go_memstats_gc_sys_bytes	Number of bytes used for garbage collection system metadata.
go_memstats_heap_alloc_bytes	Number of heap bytes allocated and still in use.
go_memstats_heap_idle_bytes	Number of heap bytes waiting to be used.
go_memstats_heap_inuse_bytes	Number of heap bytes that are in use.
go_memstats_heap_objects	Number of allocated objects.
go_memstats_heap_released_bytes_total	Total number of heap bytes released to OS.
go_memstats_heap_sys_bytes	Number of heap bytes obtained from system.
go_memstats_last_gc_time_seconds	Number of seconds since 1970 of last garbage collection.
go_memstats_lookups_total	Total number of pointer lookups.
go_memstats_mallocs_total	Total number of mallocs.
go_memstats_mcache_inuse_bytes	Number of bytes in use by mcache structures.
go_memstats_mcache_sys_bytes	Number of bytes used for mcache structures obtained from system.
go_memstats_mspan_inuse_bytes	Number of bytes in use by mspan structures.
go_memstats_mspan_sys_bytes	Number of bytes used for mspan structures obtained from system.
go_memstats_next_gc_bytes	Number of heap bytes when next garbage collection will take place.
go_memstats_other_sys_bytes	Number of bytes used for other system allocations.
go_memstats_stack_inuse_bytes	Number of bytes in use by the stack allocator.
go_memstats_stack_sys_bytes	Number of bytes obtained from system for stack allocator.
go_memstats_sys_bytes	Number of bytes obtained by system. Sum of all system allocations.
process_cpu_seconds_total	Total user and system CPU time spent in seconds.
process_max_fds	Maximum number of open file descriptors.
process_open_fds	Number of open file descriptors.
process_resident_memory_bytes	Resident memory size in bytes.
process_start_time_seconds	Start time of the process since unix epoch in seconds.
process_virtual_memory_bytes	Virtual memory size in bytes.

Wireguard Metrics

Felix also exports wireguard device stats if found/detected. Can be disabled via Felix configuration.

Name	Description
wireguard_meta	Gauge. Device / interface information for a felix/calico node, values are in this metric's labels
wireguard_bytes_rcvd	Counter. Current bytes received from a peer identified by a peer public key and endpoint
wireguard_bytes_sent	Counter. Current bytes sent to a peer identified by a peer public key and endpoint
wireguard_latest_handshake_seconds	Gauge. Last handshake with a peer, unix timestamp in seconds.