Monitoring

Vespa provides metrics integration with CloudWatch, Datadog and Prometheus / Grafana, as well as a JSON HTTP API.

There are two main approaches to transfer metrics to an external system:

• Have the external system pull metrics from Vespa
• Make Vespa push metrics to the external system

Use the example overview of two nodes running Vespa for where the APIs are set up and how they interact:

• /metrics/v1/values is the node metrics api, and aggregates metrics for processes running on the node. Each Vespa node has a metrics-proxy process running for this API, default port 19092.
• /state/v1/metrics is the process metrics api, and exposes all metrics from an individual service - here each node runs a container and a content node.
• /metrics/v2/values is an aggregation of /metrics/v1/values, for all nodes. Served on the metrics-proxy port.
• /prometheus/v1/values is the same as /metrics/v1/values, in prometheus format. Served on the metrics-proxy port.
• /prometheus/v1/values and /metrics/v2/values are also replicated on the container port, default 8080.

See the metrics guide for how to get a metric using /metrics/v1/values and /prometheus/v1/values. This guide also documents use of custom metrics and histograms.

/state/v1/health

Per-process health status is found at http://host:port/state/v1/health

/state/v1/health is most commonly used for heartbeating, see the reference for details. Example:

{
    "status": {
        "code": "up",
        "message": "Everything ok here"
    }
}

/state/v1/metrics

Per-process metrics are found at http://host:port/state/v1/metrics

Internally, Vespa aggregates metrics in the APIs above from the per-process metrics and health APIs. While most users would use the aggregated APIs, the per-process metric APIs could be used for specific cases.

Metrics are reported in snapshots, where the snapshot specifies the time window the metrics are gathered from. Typically, the service will aggregate metrics as they are reported, and after each snapshot period, a snapshot is taken of the current values, and they are reset. Using this approach, min and max values are tracked, and enables values like 95% percentile for each complete snapshot period.

Refer to the reference for details.

Vespa supports custom metrics.

Example:

{
    "status" : {
        "code" : "up",
        "message" : "Everything ok here"
    },
    "metrics" : {
        "snapshot" : {
            "from" : 1334134640.089,
            "to" : 1334134700.088,
        },
        "values" : [
            {
                "name" : "queries",
                "description" : "Number of queries executed during snapshot interval",
                "values" : {
                    "count" : 28,
                    "rate" : 0.4667
                },
                "dimensions" : {
                    "chain" : "vespa"
                }
            },
            {
                "name" : "hits_per_query",
                "description" : "Number of hits returned for queries during snapshot interval",
                "values" : {
                    "count" : 28,
                    "rate" : 0.4667,
                    "average" : 128.3,
                    "min" : 0,
                    "max" : 1000,
                    "sum" : 3584,
                    "last" : 72,
                    "95percentile" : 849.1,
                    "99percentile": 672.0,
                },
                "dimensions" : {
                    "chain" : "vespa"
                }
            }
        ]
    }
}

A flat list of metrics is returned. Each metric value reported by a component should be a separate metric. For related metrics, prefix metric names with common parts and dot separate the names - e.g. memory.free and memory.virtual.

/metrics/v1/values

This API can be used for monitoring, using products like Prometheus and DataDog. The response contains a selected set of metrics from each service running on the node, see the reference for details. Example:

$ curl http://localhost:19092/metrics/v1/values

{
    "services": [
        {
            "name": "vespa.container",
            "timestamp": 1661945852,
            "status": {
                "code": "up",
                "description": "Data collected successfully"
            },
            "metrics": [
                {
                    "values": {
                        "memory_virt": 3693178880,
                        "memory_rss": 1331331072,
                        "cpu": 2.3794255627932,
                        "cpu_util": 0.2379425562793
                    },
                    "dimensions": {
                        "metrictype": "system",
                        "instance": "container",
                        "clustername": "default",
                        "vespaVersion": "8.43.64"
                    }
                }
            ]
        }
    ]
}

/metrics/v2/values

$ curl http://localhost:19092/metrics/v2/values

A container service on the same node as the metrics proxy might forward /metrics/v2/values on its own port, normally 8080.

/metrics/v2/values exposes a selected set of metrics for every service on all nodes for the application. For example, it can be used to pull Vespa metrics to Cloudwatch using an AWS lambda function.

The metrics API exposes a selected set of metrics for the whole application, or for a single node, to allow integration with graphing and alerting services.

The response is a nodes list with metrics (see example output below), see the reference for details.

{
    "nodes": [
        {
            "hostname": "vespa-container",
            "role": "hosts/vespa-container",
            "services": [
                {
                    "name": "vespa.container",
                    "timestamp": 1634127924,
                    "status": {
                        "code": "up",
                        "description": "Data collected successfully"
                    },
                    "metrics": [
                        {
                            "values": {
                                "memory_virt": 3685253120,
                                "memory_rss": 1441259520,
                                "cpu": 29.1900152827305
                            },
                            "dimensions": {
                                "serviceId": "container"
                            }
                        },
                        {
                            "values": {
                                "jdisc.gc.ms.average": 0
                            },
                            "dimensions": {
                                "gcName": "G1OldGeneration",
                                "serviceId": "container"
                            }
                        },

/prometheus/v1/values

Vespa provides a node metrics API on each node at http://host:port/prometheus/v1/values

Port and content is the same as /metrics/v1/values.

The prometheus API on each node exposes metrics in a text based format that can be scraped by Prometheus. See below for a Prometheus / Grafana example.

Pulling metrics from Vespa

All pull-based solutions use Vespa's metrics API, which provides metrics in JSON format, either for the full system or for a single node. The polling frequency should be limited to max once every 30 seconds as more frequent polling would not give increased granularity but only lead to unnecessary load on your systems.

Pushing metrics to CloudWatch

Note: This method currently works for self-hosted Vespa only.

This is presumably the most convenient way to monitor Vespa in CloudWatch. Steps / requirements:

1. An IAM user or IAM role that only has the putMetricData permission.
2. Store the credentials for the above user or role in a shared credentials file on each Vespa node. If a role is used, provide a mechanism to keep the credentials file updated when keys are rotated.
3. Configure Vespa to push metrics to CloudWatch - example configuration for the admin section in services.xml:

   <metrics>
       <consumer id="my-cloudwatch">
           <metric-set id="default" />
           <cloudwatch region="us-east-1" namespace="my-vespa-metrics">
               <shared-credentials file="/path/to/credentials-file" />
           </cloudwatch>
       </consumer>
   </metrics>
   

   This configuration sends the default set of Vespa metrics to the CloudWatch namespace my-vespa-metrics in the us-east-1 region. Refer to the metric list for default metric set.

Monitoring with Grafana

Follow these steps to set up monitoring with Grafana for a Vespa instance. This guide builds on the quick start by adding three more Docker containers and connecting these in the Docker monitoring network:

1. Run the Quick Start:

   Complete steps 1-7 (or 1-10), but skip the removal step. Clone repository:

   $ git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/vespa-engine/sample-apps.git && \
     cd sample-apps/examples/operations/monitoring/album-recommendation-monitoring
   

2. Create a network and add the vespa container to it:

   $ docker network create --driver bridge monitoring && \
     docker network connect monitoring vespa
   

   This creates the monitoring network and attaches the vespa container to it. Find details in docker-compose.yml.

3. Launch Prometheus:

   $ docker run --detach --name sample-apps-prometheus --hostname prometheus \
     --network monitoring \
     --publish 9090:9090 \
     --volume `pwd`/prometheus/prometheus-selfhosted.yml:/etc/prometheus/prometheus.yml \
     prom/prometheus
   

   Prometheus is a time-series database, which holds a series of values associated with a timestamp. Open Prometheus at http://localhost:9090/. One can easily find what data Prometheus has, the input box auto-completes, e.g. enter feed_operations_rate and click Execute. Also explore the Status dropdown.

4. Launch Grafana:

   $ docker run --detach --name sample-apps-grafana \
     --network monitoring \
     --publish 3000:3000 \
     --volume `pwd`/grafana/provisioning:/etc/grafana/provisioning \
     grafana/grafana
   

   This launches Grafana. Grafana is a visualisation tool that can be used to easily make representations of important metrics surrounding Vespa. Open http://localhost:3000/ and find the Grafana login screen - log in with admin/admin (skip changing password). From the list on the left, click Browse under Dashboards (the symbol with 4 blocks), then click the Vespa Detailed Monitoring Dashboard. The dashboard displays detailed Vespa metrics - empty for now.

5. Build the Random Data Feeder:

   $ docker build album-recommendation-random-data --tag random-data-feeder
   

   $ docker build album-recommendation-random-data --no-cache --tag random-data-feeder -o out
   

   $ ls out/usr/local/lib/app.jar
   

   This builds the Random Data Feeder - it generates random sets of data and puts them into the Vespa instance. Also, it repeatedly runs queries, for Grafana visualisation. Compiling the Random Data Feeder takes a few minutes.

6. Run the Random Data Feeder:

   $ docker run --detach --name sample-apps-random-data-feeder \
     --network monitoring \
     random-data-feeder
   

7. Check the updated Grafana metrics:

   Graphs will now show up in Grafana and Prometheus - it might take a minute or two. The Grafana dashboard is fully customisable. Change the default modes of Grafana and Prometheus by editing the configuration files in album-recommendation-monitoring.

8. Remove containers and network:

   $ docker rm -f vespa \
     sample-apps-grafana \
     sample-apps-prometheus \
     sample-apps-random-data-feeder
   

   $ docker network rm monitoring