Monitoring your Cluster

Teleport provides health checking mechanisms in order to verify that it is healthy and ready to serve traffic. Metrics, tracing, and profiling provide in-depth data, tracking cluster performance and responsiveness.

Enable health monitoring

How to monitor the health of a Teleport instance.

Teleport's diagnostic HTTP endpoints are disabled by default. You can enable them via:

Command line

Start a teleport instance with the --diag-addr flag set to the local address where the diagnostic endpoint will listen:

$ sudo teleport start  --diag-addr=127.0.0.1:3000

Config file

Edit a teleport instance's configuration file (/etc/teleport.yaml by default) to include the following:

teleport:
    diag_addr: 127.0.0.1:3000

To enable debug logs:

log:
    severity: DEBUG

Ensure you can connect to the diagnostic endpoint

Verify that Teleport is now serving the diagnostics endpoint:

$ curl http://127.0.0.1:3000/healthz

Now you can collect monitoring information from several endpoints. These can be used by things like Kubernetes probes to monitor the health of a Teleport process.

/healthz

The http://127.0.0.1:3000/healthz endpoint responds with a body of {"status":"ok"} and an HTTP 200 OK status code if the process is running.

This is a check to determine if the Teleport process is still running.

/readyz

The http://127.0.0.1:3000/readyz endpoint is similar to /healthz, but its response includes information about the state of the process.

The response body is a JSON object of the form:

{ "status": "a status message here"}

/readyz and heartbeats

If a Teleport component fails to execute its heartbeat procedure, it will enter a degraded state. Teleport will begin recovering from this state when a heartbeat completes successfully.

The first successful heartbeat will transition Teleport into a recovering state. A second consecutive successful heartbeat will cause Teleport to transition to the OK state.

Teleport heartbeats run approximately every 60 seconds when healthy, and failed heartbeats are retried approximately every 5 seconds. This means that depending on the timing of heartbeats, it can take 60-70 seconds after connectivity is restored for /readyz to start reporting healthy again.

Status codes

The status code of the response can be one of:

• HTTP 200 OK: Teleport is operating normally
• HTTP 503 Service Unavailable: Teleport has encountered a connection error and is running in a degraded state. This happens when a Teleport heartbeat fails.
• HTTP 400 Bad Request: Teleport is either entering its initial startup phase or has begun recovering from a degraded state.

The same state information is also available via the process_state metric under the /metrics endpoint.

Metrics

Teleport exposes metrics for all of its components, helping you get insight into the state of your cluster. This guide explains the metrics that you can collect from your Teleport cluster.

Enabling metrics

Teleport's diagnostic HTTP endpoints are disabled by default. You can enable them via:

Command line

Start a teleport instance with the --diag-addr flag set to the local address where the diagnostic endpoint will listen:

$ sudo teleport start  --diag-addr=127.0.0.1:3000

Config file

Edit a teleport instance's configuration file (/etc/teleport.yaml by default) to include the following:

teleport:
    diag_addr: 127.0.0.1:3000

To enable debug logs:

log:
    severity: DEBUG

Ensure you can connect to the diagnostic endpoint

Verify that Teleport is now serving the diagnostics endpoint:

$ curl http://127.0.0.1:3000/healthz

This will enable the http://127.0.0.1:3000/metrics endpoint, which serves the metrics that Teleport tracks. It is compatible with Prometheus collectors.

The following metrics are available:

tip

Teleport Enterprise (cloud-hosted) does not expose monitoring endpoints for the Auth Service and Proxy Service.

Auth Service and backends

Name	Type	Component	Description
audit_failed_disk_monitoring	counter	Teleport Audit Log	Number of times disk monitoring failed.
audit_failed_emit_events	counter	Teleport Audit Log	Number of times emitting audit events failed.
audit_percentage_disk_space_used	gauge	Teleport Audit Log	Percentage of disk space used.
audit_server_open_files	gauge	Teleport Audit Log	Number of open audit files.
auth_generate_requests_throttled_total	counter	Teleport Auth	Number of throttled requests to generate new server keys.
auth_generate_requests_total	counter	Teleport Auth	Number of requests to generate new server keys.
auth_generate_requests	gauge	Teleport Auth	Number of current generate requests.
auth_generate_seconds	histogram	Teleport Auth	Latency for generate requests.
backend_batch_read_requests_total	counter	cache	Number of read requests to the backend.
backend_batch_read_seconds	histogram	cache	Latency for batch read operations.
backend_batch_write_requests_total	counter	cache	Number of batch write requests to the backend.
backend_batch_write_seconds	histogram	cache	Latency for backend batch write operations.
backend_read_requests_total	counter	cache	Number of read requests to the backend.
backend_read_seconds	histogram	cache	Latency for read operations.
backend_requests	counter	cache	Number of requests to the backend (reads, writes, and keepalives).
backend_write_requests_total	counter	cache	Number of write requests to the backend.
backend_write_seconds	histogram	cache	Latency for backend write operations.
cluster_name_not_found_total	counter	Teleport Auth	Number of times a cluster was not found.
dynamo_requests_total	counter	DynamoDB	Total number of requests to the DynamoDB API.
dynamo_requests	counter	DynamoDB	Total number of requests to the DynamoDB API grouped by result.
dynamo_requests_seconds	histogram	DynamoDB	Latency of DynamoDB API requests.
etcd_backend_batch_read_requests	counter	etcd	Number of read requests to the etcd database.
etcd_backend_batch_read_seconds	histogram	etcd	Latency for etcd read operations.
etcd_backend_read_requests	counter	etcd	Number of read requests to the etcd database.
etcd_backend_read_seconds	histogram	etcd	Latency for etcd read operations.
etcd_backend_tx_requests	counter	etcd	Number of transaction requests to the database.
etcd_backend_tx_seconds	histogram	etcd	Latency for etcd transaction operations.
etcd_backend_write_requests	counter	etcd	Number of write requests to the database.
etcd_backend_write_seconds	histogram	etcd	Latency for etcd write operations.
teleport_etcd_events	counter	etcd	Total number of etcd events processed.
teleport_etcd_event_backpressure	counter	etcd	Total number of times event processing encountered backpressure.
firestore_events_backend_batch_read_requests	counter	GCP Cloud Firestore	Number of batch read requests to Cloud Firestore events.
firestore_events_backend_batch_read_seconds	histogram	GCP Cloud Firestore	Latency for Cloud Firestore events batch read operations.
firestore_events_backend_batch_write_requests	counter	GCP Cloud Firestore	Number of batch write requests to Cloud Firestore events.
firestore_events_backend_batch_write_seconds	histogram	GCP Cloud Firestore	Latency for Cloud Firestore events batch write operations.
firestore_events_backend_write_requests	counter	GCP Cloud Firestore	Number of write requests to Cloud Firestore events.
firestore_events_backend_write_seconds	histogram	GCP Cloud Firestore	Latency for Cloud Firestore events write operations.
gcs_event_storage_downloads_seconds	histogram	GCP GCS	Latency for GCS download operations.
gcs_event_storage_downloads	counter	GCP GCS	Number of downloads from the GCS backend.
gcs_event_storage_uploads_seconds	histogram	GCP GCS	Latency for GCS upload operations.
gcs_event_storage_uploads	counter	GCP GCS	Number of uploads to the GCS backend.
grpc_server_started_total	counter	Teleport Auth	Total number of RPCs started on the server.
grpc_server_handled_total	counter	Teleport Auth	Total number of RPCs completed on the server, regardless of success or failure.
grpc_server_msg_received_total	counter	Teleport Auth	Total number of RPC stream messages received on the server.
grpc_server_msg_sent_total	counter	Teleport Auth	Total number of gRPC stream messages sent by the server.
heartbeat_connections_received_total	counter	Teleport Auth	Number of times the Auth Service received a heartbeat connection, representing total heart beating Agents.
s3_requests_total	counter	Amazon S3	Total number of requests to the S3 API.
s3_requests	counter	Amazon S3	Total number of requests to the S3 API grouped by result.
s3_requests_seconds	histogram	Amazon S3	Request latency for the S3 API.
teleport_audit_emit_events	counter	Teleport Audit Log	Number of audit events emitted.
teleport_audit_parquetlog_batch_processing_seconds	histogram	Teleport Audit Log	Duration of processing single batch of events in the Parquet-format audit log.
teleport_audit_parquetlog_s3_flush_seconds	histogram	Teleport Audit Log	Duration of flushing parquet files to S3 in Parquet-format audit log.
teleport_audit_parquetlog_delete_events_seconds	histogram	Teleport Audit Log	Duration of deletion events from SQS in Parquet-format audit log.
teleport_audit_parquetlog_batch_size	histogram	Teleport Audit Log	Overall size of events in single batch in Parquet-format audit log.
teleport_audit_parquetlog_batch_count	counter	Teleport Audit Log	Total number of events in single batch in Parquet-format audit log.
teleport_audit_parquetlog_last_processed_timestamp	gauge	Teleport Audit Log	Number of last processing time in Parquet-format audit log.
teleport_audit_parquetlog_age_oldest_processed_message	gauge	Teleport Audit Log	Number of age of oldest event in Parquet-format audit log.
teleport_audit_parquetlog_errors_from_collect_count	counter	Teleport Audit Log	Number of collect failures in Parquet-format audit log.
teleport_connected_resources	gauge	Teleport Auth	Number and type of resources connected via keepalives. x
teleport_postgres_events_backend_write_requests	counter	Postgres (Events)	Number of write requests to postgres events, labeled with the request status (success or failure).
teleport_postgres_events_backend_batch_read_requests	counter	Postgres (Events)	Number of batch read requests to postgres events, labeled with the request status (success or failure).
teleport_postgres_events_backend_batch_delete_requests	counter	Postgres (Events)	Number of batch delete requests to postgres events, labeled with the request status (success or failure).
teleport_postgres_events_backend_write_seconds	histogram	Postgres (Events)	Latency for postgres events write operations, in seconds.
teleport_postgres_events_backend_batch_read_seconds	histogram	Postgres (Events)	Latency for postgres events batch read operations, in seconds.
teleport_postgres_events_backend_batch_delete_seconds	histogram	Postgres (Events)	Latency for postgres events batch delete operations, in seconds.
teleport_registered_servers	gauge	Teleport Auth	The number of Teleport services that are connected to an Auth Service instance grouped by version.
teleport_registered_servers_by_install_methods	gauge	Teleport Auth	The number of Teleport services that are connected to an Auth Service instance grouped by install methods.
teleport_roles_total	gauge	Teleport Auth	The number of roles that exist in the cluster.
teleport_migrations	gauge	Teleport Auth	Tracks for each migration if it is active (1) or not (0).
user_login_total	counter	Teleport Auth	Number of user logins.
watcher_event_sizes	histogram	cache	Overall size of events emitted.
watcher_events	histogram	cache	Per resource size of events emitted.

Enhanced Session Recording / BPF

Name	Type	Component	Description
bpf_lost_command_events	counter	BPF	Number of lost command events.
bpf_lost_disk_events	counter	BPF	Number of lost disk events.
bpf_lost_network_events	counter	BPF	Number of lost network events.

Proxy Service

Name	Type	Component	Description
failed_connect_to_node_attempts_total	counter	Teleport Proxy	Number of failed SSH connection attempts to the SSH Service. Use with teleport_connect_to_node_attempts_total to get the failure rate.
failed_login_attempts_total	counter	Teleport Proxy	Number of failed tsh login or tsh ssh logins.
grpc_client_started_total	counter	Teleport Proxy	Total number of RPCs started on the client.
grpc_client_handled_total	counter	Teleport Proxy	Total number of RPCs completed on the client, regardless of success or failure.
grpc_client_msg_received_total	counter	Teleport Proxy	Total number of RPC stream messages received on the client.
grpc_client_msg_sent_total	counter	Teleport Proxy	Total number of gRPC stream messages sent by the client.
proxy_connection_limit_exceeded_total	counter	Teleport Proxy	Number of connections that exceeded the Proxy Service connection limit.
proxy_peer_client_dial_error_total	counter	Teleport Proxy	Total number of errors encountered dialing peer Proxy Service instances.
proxy_peer_server_connections	gauge	Teleport Proxy	Number of currently opened connection to proxy Proxy Service instances.
proxy_peer_client_rpc	gauge	Teleport Proxy	Number of current client RPC requests.
proxy_peer_client_rpc_total	counter	Teleport Proxy	Total number of client RPC requests.
proxy_peer_client_rpc_duration_seconds	histogram	Teleport Proxy	Duration in seconds of RPCs sent by the client.
proxy_peer_client_message_sent_size	histogram	Teleport Proxy	Size of messages sent by the client.
proxy_peer_client_message_received_size	histogram	Teleport Proxy	Size of messages received by the client.
proxy_peer_server_connections	gauge	Teleport Proxy	Number of currently opened connection to peer Proxy Service clients.
proxy_peer_server_rpc	gauge	Teleport Proxy	Number of current server RPC requests.
proxy_peer_server_rpc_total	counter	Teleport Proxy	Total number of server RPC requests.
proxy_peer_server_rpc_duration_seconds	histogram	Teleport Proxy	Duration in seconds of RPCs sent by the server.
proxy_peer_server_message_sent_size	histogram	Teleport Proxy	Size of messages sent by the server.
proxy_peer_server_message_received_size	histogram	Teleport Proxy	Size of messages received by the server.
proxy_ssh_sessions_total	gauge	Teleport Proxy	Number of active sessions through this Proxy Service instance.
proxy_missing_ssh_tunnels	gauge	Teleport Proxy	Number of missing SSH tunnels. Used to debug if Teleport instances have discovered all Proxy Service instances.
remote_clusters	gauge	Teleport Proxy	Number of inbound connections from leaf clusters.
teleport_connect_to_node_attempts_total	counter	Teleport Proxy	Number of SSH connection attempts to a SSH Service. Use with failed_connect_to_node_attempts_total to get the failure rate.
teleport_reverse_tunnels_connected	gauge	Teleport Proxy	Number of reverse SSH tunnels connected to the Teleport Proxy Service by Teleport instances.
teleport_proxy_db_connection_setup_time_seconds	histogram	Teleport Proxy	Time to establish connection to DB service from Proxy service.
teleport_proxy_db_connection_dial_attempts_total	counter	Teleport Proxy	Number of dial attempts from Proxy to DB service made.
teleport_proxy_db_connection_dial_failures_total	counter	Teleport Proxy	Number of failed dial attempts from Proxy to DB service made.
teleport_proxy_db_attempted_servers_total	histogram	Teleport Proxy	Number of servers processed during connection attempt to the DB service from Proxy service.
teleport_proxy_db_connection_tls_config_time_seconds	histogram	Teleport Proxy	Time to fetch TLS configuration for the connection to DB service from Proxy service.
teleport_proxy_db_active_connections_total	gauge	Teleport Proxy	Number of currently active connections to DB service from Proxy service.
trusted_clusters	gauge	Teleport Proxy	Number of outbound connections to leaf clusters.

Database Service

Name	Type	Component	Description
teleport_db_messages_from_client_total	counter	Teleport Database Service	Number of messages (packets) received from the DB client.
teleport_db_messages_from_server_total	counter	Teleport Database Service	Number of messages (packets) received from the DB server.
teleport_db_method_call_count_total	counter	Teleport Database Service	Number of times a DB method was called.
teleport_db_method_call_latency_seconds	histogram	Teleport Database Service	Call latency for a DB method calls.
teleport_db_initialized_connections_total	counter	Teleport Database Service	Number of initialized DB connections.
teleport_db_active_connections_total	gauge	Teleport Database Service	Number of active DB connections.
teleport_db_connection_durations_seconds	histogram	Teleport Database Service	Duration of DB connection.
teleport_db_connection_setup_time_seconds	histogram	Teleport Database Service	Initial time to setup DB connection, before any requests are handled.
teleport_db_errors_total	counter	Teleport Database Service	Number of synthetic DB errors sent to the client.

Kubernetes Access

The following tables identify all metrics available in the proxy service if Kubernetes access is enabled.

Client

The following table identifies all metrics available when the service connects to upstream servers. In the case of proxy, the upstream server can be a kubernetes_service or Kubernetes Cluster if it's running in legacy mode.

Name	Type	Component	Description
teleport_kubernetes_client_in_flight_requests	gauge	Teleport Kubernetes Proxy	In-flight requests waiting for the upstream response.
teleport_kubernetes_client_requests_total	counter	Teleport Kubernetes Proxy	Total number of requests sent to the upstream Teleport proxy, kube_service or Kubernetes Cluster servers.
teleport_kubernetes_client_tls_duration_seconds	histogram	Teleport Kubernetes Proxy	Latency distribution of TLS handshakes.
teleport_kubernetes_client_got_conn_duration_seconds	histogram	Teleport Kubernetes Proxy	Latency distribution of time to dial to the upstream server - using reverse tunnel or direct dialer.
teleport_kubernetes_client_first_byte_response_duration_seconds	histogram	Teleport Kubernetes Proxy	Latency distribution of time to receive the first response byte from the upstream server.
teleport_kubernetes_client_request_duration_seconds	histogram	Teleport Kubernetes Proxy	Latency distribution of the upstream request time.

Server

The following table identifies all metrics available for incoming connections.

Name	Type	Component	Description
teleport_kubernetes_server_in_flight_requests	gauge	Teleport Kubernetes Proxy	In-flight requests currently handled by the server.
teleport_kubernetes_server_api_requests_total	counter	Teleport Kubernetes Proxy	Total number of requests handled by the server.
teleport_kubernetes_server_request_duration_seconds	histogram	Teleport Kubernetes Proxy	Latency distribution of the total request time.
teleport_kubernetes_server_response_size_bytes	histogram	Teleport Kubernetes Proxy	Distribution of the response size.
teleport_kubernetes_server_exec_in_flight_sessions	gauge	Teleport Kubernetes Proxy	Number of active kubectl exec sessions.
teleport_kubernetes_server_exec_sessions_total	counter	Teleport Kubernetes Proxy	Total number of kubectl exec sessions.
teleport_kubernetes_server_portforward_in_flight_sessions	gauge	Teleport Kubernetes Proxy	Number of active kubectl portforward sessions.
teleport_kubernetes_server_portforward_sessions_total	counter	Teleport Kubernetes Proxy	Number of active kubectl portforward sessions.
teleport_kubernetes_server_join_in_flight_sessions	gauge	Teleport Kubernetes Proxy	Number of active joining sessions,
teleport_kubernetes_server_join_sessions_total	counter	Teleport Kubernetes Proxy	Total number of joining sessions.

Teleport SSH Service

Name	Type	Component	Description
user_max_concurrent_sessions_hit_total	counter	Teleport SSH	Number of times a user exceeded their concurrent session limit.

Teleport Kubernetes Service

The following table identifies all metrics available when the service connects to upstream servers. In the case of kubernetes_service, the upstream server is always a Kubernetes cluster.

Name	Type	Component	Description
teleport_kubernetes_client_in_flight_requests	gauge	Teleport Kubernetes Service	In-flight requests waiting for the upstream response.
teleport_kubernetes_client_requests_total	counter	Teleport Kubernetes Service	Total number of requests sent to the upstream teleport proxy, kube_service or Kubernetes Cluster servers.
teleport_kubernetes_client_tls_duration_seconds	histogram	Teleport Kubernetes Service	Latency distribution of TLS handshakes.
teleport_kubernetes_client_got_conn_duration_seconds	histogram	Teleport Kubernetes Service	Latency distribution of time to dial to the upstream server - using reversetunnel or direct dialer.
teleport_kubernetes_client_first_byte_response_duration_seconds	histogram	Teleport Kubernetes Service	Latency distribution of time to receive the first response byte from the upstream server.
teleport_kubernetes_client_request_duration_seconds	histogram	Teleport Kubernetes Service	Latency distribution of the upstream request time.

The following table identifies all metrics available for incoming connections.

Name	Type	Component	Description
teleport_kubernetes_server_in_flight_requests	gauge	Teleport Kubernetes Service	In-flight requests currently handled by the server.
teleport_kubernetes_server_api_requests_total	counter	Teleport Kubernetes Service	Total number of requests handled by the server.
teleport_kubernetes_server_request_duration_seconds	histogram	Teleport Kubernetes Service	Latency distribution of the total request time.
teleport_kubernetes_server_response_size_bytes	histogram	Teleport Kubernetes Service	Distribution of the response size.
teleport_kubernetes_server_exec_in_flight_sessions	gauge	Teleport Kubernetes Service	Number of active kubectl exec sessions.
teleport_kubernetes_server_exec_sessions_total	counter	Teleport Kubernetes Service	Total number of kubectl exec sessions.
teleport_kubernetes_server_portforward_in_flight_sessions	gauge	Teleport Kubernetes Service	Number of active kubectl portforward sessions.
teleport_kubernetes_server_portforward_sessions_total	counter	Teleport Kubernetes Service	Number of active kubectl portforward sessions.
teleport_kubernetes_server_join_in_flight_sessions	gauge	Teleport Kubernetes Service	Number of active joining sessions,
teleport_kubernetes_server_join_sessions_total	counter	Teleport Kubernetes Service	Total number of joining sessions.

All Teleport instances

Name	Type	Component	Description
process_state	gauge	Teleport	State of the teleport process: 0 - ok, 1 - recovering, 2 - degraded, 3 - starting.
certificate_mismatch_total	counter	Teleport	Number of SSH server login failures due to a certificate mismatch.
rx	counter	Teleport	Number of bytes received during an SSH connection.
server_interactive_sessions_total	gauge	Teleport	Number of active sessions.
teleport_build_info	gauge	Teleport	Provides build information of Teleport including gitref (git describe --long --tags), Go version, and Teleport version. The value of this gauge will always be 1.
teleport_breaker_connector_executions_total	counter	Teleport	Number of requests to the Teleport Auth Service API that go through a circuit breaker done by Teleport services, labeled by role of the connector (almost always Instance), state of the associated circuit breaker and success as interpreted by the breaker.
teleport_cache_events	counter	Teleport	Number of events received by a Teleport service cache. Teleport's Auth Service, Proxy Service, and other services cache incoming events related to their service.
teleport_cache_stale_events	counter	Teleport	Number of stale events received by a Teleport service cache. A high percentage of stale events can indicate a degraded backend.
tx	counter	Teleport	Number of bytes transmitted during an SSH connection.

Go runtime metrics

These metrics are surfaced by the Go runtime and are not specific to Teleport.

Name	Type	Component	Description
go_gc_duration_seconds	summary	Internal Go	A summary of GC invocation durations.
go_goroutines	gauge	Internal Go	Number of goroutines that currently exist.
go_info	gauge	Internal Go	Information about the Go environment.
go_memstats_alloc_bytes_total	counter	Internal Go	Total number of bytes allocated, even if freed.
go_memstats_alloc_bytes	gauge	Internal Go	Number of bytes allocated and still in use.
go_memstats_buck_hash_sys_bytes	gauge	Internal Go	Number of bytes used by the profiling bucket hash table.
go_memstats_frees_total	counter	Internal Go	Total number of frees.
go_memstats_gc_cpu_fraction	gauge	Internal Go	The fraction of this program's available CPU time used by the GC since the program started.
go_memstats_gc_sys_bytes	gauge	Internal Go	Number of bytes used for garbage collection system metadata.
go_memstats_heap_alloc_bytes	gauge	Internal Go	Number of heap bytes allocated and still in use.
go_memstats_heap_idle_bytes	gauge	Internal Go	Number of heap bytes waiting to be used.
go_memstats_heap_inuse_bytes	gauge	Internal Go	Number of heap bytes that are in use.
go_memstats_heap_objects	gauge	Internal Go	Number of allocated objects.
go_memstats_heap_released_bytes	gauge	Internal Go	Number of heap bytes released to the OS.
go_memstats_heap_sys_bytes	gauge	Internal Go	Number of heap bytes obtained from the system.
go_memstats_last_gc_time_seconds	gauge	Internal Go	Number of seconds since the Unix epoch of the last garbage collection.
go_memstats_lookups_total	counter	Internal Go	Total number of pointer lookups.
go_memstats_mallocs_total	counter	Internal Go	Total number of mallocs.
go_memstats_mcache_inuse_bytes	gauge	Internal Go	Number of bytes in use by mcache structures.
go_memstats_mcache_sys_bytes	gauge	Internal Go	Number of bytes used for mcache structures obtained from system.
go_memstats_mspan_inuse_bytes	gauge	Internal Go	Number of bytes in use by mspan structures.
go_memstats_mspan_sys_bytes	gauge	Internal Go	Number of bytes used for mspan structures obtained from system.
go_memstats_next_gc_bytes	gauge	Internal Go	Number of heap bytes when next the garbage collection will take place.
go_memstats_other_sys_bytes	gauge	Internal Go	Number of bytes used for other system allocations.
go_memstats_stack_inuse_bytes	gauge	Internal Go	Number of bytes in use by the stack allocator.
go_memstats_stack_sys_bytes	gauge	Internal Go	Number of bytes obtained from the system for stack allocator.
go_memstats_sys_bytes	gauge	Internal Go	Number of bytes obtained from the system.
go_threads	gauge	Internal Go	Number of OS threads created.
process_cpu_seconds_total	counter	Internal Go	Total user and system CPU time spent in seconds.
process_max_fds	gauge	Internal Go	Maximum number of open file descriptors.
process_open_fds	gauge	Internal Go	Number of open file descriptors.
process_resident_memory_bytes	gauge	Internal Go	Resident memory size in bytes.
process_start_time_seconds	gauge	Internal Go	Start time of the process since the Unix epoch in seconds.
process_virtual_memory_bytes	gauge	Internal Go	Virtual memory size in bytes.
process_virtual_memory_max_bytes	gauge	Internal Go	Maximum amount of virtual memory available in bytes.

Prometheus

Name	Type	Component	Description
promhttp_metric_handler_requests_in_flight	gauge	prometheus	Current number of scrapes being served.
promhttp_metric_handler_requests_total	counter	prometheus	Total number of scrapes by HTTP status code.

Distributed tracing

How to enable distributed tracing for a Teleport instance.

Teleport leverages OpenTelemetry to generate traces and export them to any OpenTelemetry Protocol (OTLP) capable exporter. In the event that your telemetry backend doesn't support receiving OTLP traces, you may be able to leverage the OpenTelemetry Collector to proxy traces from OTLP to a format that your telemetry backend accepts.

Configure Teleport

In order to enable tracing for a teleport instance, add the following section to that instance's configuration file (/etc/teleport.yaml). For a detailed description of these configuration fields, see the configuration reference page.

tracing_service:
   enabled: yes
   exporter_url: grpc://collector.example.com:4317
   sampling_rate_per_million: 1000000

Sampling rate

It is important to choose the sampling rate wisely. Sampling at a rate of 100% could have a negative impact on the performance of your cluster. Teleport honors the sampling rate included in any incoming requests, which means that even when the tracing_service is enabled and the sampling rate is 0, if Teleport receives a request that has a span which is sampled, then Teleport will sample and export all spans that are generated in response to that request.

Exporter URL

The exporter_url setting indicates where Teleport should send spans to. Supported schemes are grpc://, http://, https://, and file:// (if no scheme is provided, then grpc:// is used).

When using file://, the url must be a path to a directory that Teleport has write permissions for. Spans will be saved to files within the provided directory, each file containing one proto encoded span per line. Files are rotated after exceeding 100MB, in order to override the default limit add ?limit=<desired_file_size_in_bytes> to the exporter_url (i.e. file:///var/lib/teleport/traces?limit=100).

By default the connection to the exporter is insecure, to support TLS add the following to the tracing_service configuration:

   # Optional path to CA certificates are used to validate the exporter.
  ca_certs:
    - /var/lib/teleport/exporter_ca.pem
  # Optional path tp TLS certificates are used to enable mTLS for the exporter
  https_keypairs:
    - key_file: /var/lib/teleport/exporter_key.pem
      cert_file: /var/lib/teleport/exporter_cert.pem

After updating teleport.yaml, start your teleport instance to apply the new configuration.

tsh

To capture traces from tsh add the --trace flag to your command. All traces generated by tsh --trace will be proxied to the exporter_url defined for the Auth Service of the cluster the command is being run on.

$ tsh --trace ssh root@myserver
$ tsh --trace ls

Exporting traces from tsh to a different exporter than the one defined in the Auth Service config is also possible via the --trace-exporter flag. A URL must be provided that adheres to the same format as the exporter_url of the tracing_service.

$ tsh --trace --trace-exporter=grpc://collector.example.com:4317 ssh root@myserver
$ tsh --trace --trace-exporter=file:///var/lib/teleport/traces ls

Collecting profiles

How to collect runtime profiling data from a Teleport instance.

Teleport leverages Go's diagnostic capabilities to collect and export profiling data. Profiles can help identify the cause of spikes in CPU, the source of memory leaks, or the reason for a deadlock.

Using the Debug Service

The Teleport Debug Service enables administrators to collect diagnostic profiles without enabling pprof endpoints at startup. The service, enabled by default, ensures local-only access and must be consumed from inside the same instance.

teleport debug profile collects a list of pprof profiles. It outputs a compressed tarball (.tar.gz) to STDOUT. You decompress it using tar or direct the result to a file.

By default, it collects goroutine, heap and profile profiles.

Each profile collected will have a correspondent file inside the tarball. For example, collecting goroutine,trace,heap will result in goroutine.pprof, trace.pprof, and heap.pprof files.

# Collect default profiles and save to a file.
$ teleport debug profile > pprof.tar.gz
$ tar xvf pprof.tar.gz

# Collect default profiles and decompress it.
$ teleport debug profile | tar xzv -C ./

# Collect "trace" and "mutex" profiles and save to a file.
$ teleport debug profile trace,mutex > pprof.tar.gz

# Collect profiles setting the profiling time in seconds
$ teleport debug profile -s 20 trace > pprof.tar.gz

Specify your Teleport configuration path

If your Teleport configuration is not placed on the default path (/etc/teleport.yaml), you must specify its location to the CLI command using the -c/--config flag.

If you're running Teleport on a Kubernetes cluster you can directly collect profiles to a local directory without an interactive session:

$ kubectl -n teleport exec my-pod -- teleport debug profile > pprof.tar.gz 

After extracting the contents, you can use go tool commands to explore and visualize them:

# Opens the terminal interactive explorer
$ go tool pprof heap.pprof

# Opens the web visualizer
$ go tool pprof -http : heap.pprof

# Visualize trace profiles
$ go tool trace trace.pprof

Using diagnostics endpoints

The profiling endpoint is only enabled if the --debug flag is supplied.

Teleport's diagnostic HTTP endpoints are disabled by default. You can enable them via:

Command line

Start a teleport instance with the --diag-addr flag set to the local address where the diagnostic endpoint will listen:

$ sudo teleport start --debug --diag-addr=127.0.0.1:3000

Config file

Edit a teleport instance's configuration file (/etc/teleport.yaml by default) to include the following:

teleport:
    diag_addr: 127.0.0.1:3000

To enable debug logs:

log:
    severity: DEBUG

Ensure you can connect to the diagnostic endpoint

Verify that Teleport is now serving the diagnostics endpoint:

$ curl http://127.0.0.1:3000/healthz

Collecting profiles

Go's standard profiling endpoints are served at http://127.0.0.1:3000/debug/pprof/. Retrieving a profile requires sending a request to the endpoint corresponding to the desired profile type. When debugging an issue it is helpful to collect a series of profiles over a period of time.

CPU

CPU profile show execution statistics gathered over a user specified period:

# Download the profile into a file:
$ curl -o cpu.profile http://127.0.0.1:3000/debug/pprof/profile?seconds=30

# Visualize the profile
$ go tool pprof -http : cpu.profile

Goroutine

Goroutine profiles show the stack traces for all running goroutines in the system:

# Download the profile into a file:
$ curl -o goroutine.profile http://127.0.0.1:3000/debug/pprof/goroutine

# Visualize the profile
$ go tool pprof -http : goroutine.profile

Heap

Heap profiles show allocated objects in the system:

# Download the profile into a file:
$ curl -o heap.profile http://127.0.0.1:3000/debug/pprof/heap

# Visualize the profile
$ go tool pprof  -http : heap.profile

Trace

Trace profiles capture scheduling, system calls, garbage collections, heap size, and other events that are collected by the Go runtime over a user specified period of time:

# Download the profile into a file:
$ curl -o trace.out http://127.0.0.1:3000/debug/pprof/trace?seconds=5

# Visualize the profile
$ go tool trace trace.out

Further Reading

• More information about diagnostics in the Go ecosystem: https://go.dev/doc/diagnostics
• Go's profiling endpoints: https://golang.org/pkg/net/http/pprof/
• A deep dive on profiling Go programs: https://go.dev/blog/pprof