InfluxDB Logs Sink

The Vector influxdb_logs sink sends logs to InfluxDB.

Configuration

• v2
• v2 (adv)
• v1
• v1 (adv)

• vector.toml
• vector.yaml
• vector.json

[sinks.my_sink_id]
  # General
  type = "influxdb_logs" # required
  inputs = ["my-source-or-transform-id", "prefix-*"] # required
  bucket = "vector-bucket" # required
  endpoint = "http://localhost:8086/" # required
  namespace = "service" # required

  # Auth
  org = "my-org" # required
  token = "${INFLUXDB_TOKEN}" # required

  # Encoding

  # Healthcheck
  healthcheck.enabled = true # optional, default

16 items

v2 v1commonrequired

• optionaltable

  batch

  Configures the sink batching behavior.

  • commonoptionaluint

    max_bytes

    The maximum size of a batch, in bytes, before it is flushed.

    • Default: 1049000 (bytes)
  • commonoptionaluint

    timeout_secs

    The maximum age of a batch before it is flushed. See Buffers & batches for more info.

    • Default: 1 (seconds)
• commonrequiredstring

  bucket

  The destination bucket for writes into InfluxDB 2.

  • Syntax: literal
  • View examples
• optionaltable

  buffer

  Configures the sink specific buffer behavior.

  • commonoptionaluint

    max_events

    The maximum number of events allowed in the buffer. See Buffers & batches for more info.

    • Only relevant when: type = "memory"
    • Default: 500 (events)
  • commonrequired*uint

    max_size

    The maximum size of the buffer on the disk. See Buffers & batches for more info.

    • Only required when: type = "disk"
    • View examples
  • enumcommonoptionalstring

    type

    The buffer's type and storage mechanism.

    • Syntax: literal
    • Default: "memory"
    • Enum, must be one of: "memory" "disk"
    • View examples
  • enumoptionalstring

    when_full

    The behavior when the buffer becomes full.

    • Syntax: literal
    • Default: "block"
    • Enum, must be one of: "block" "drop_newest"
    • View examples
• commonoptionalstring

  consistency

  Sets the write consistency for the point for InfluxDB 1.

  • Syntax: literal
  • View examples
• commonrequiredstring

  database

  Sets the target database for the write into InfluxDB 1.

  • Syntax: literal
  • View examples
• commonrequiredtable

  encoding

  Configures the encoding specific sink behavior.

  • optional[string]

    except_fields

    Prevent the sink from encoding the specified labels.

    • View examples
  • optional[string]

    only_fields

    Prevent the sink from encoding the specified labels.

    • View examples
  • enumoptionalstring

    timestamp_format

    How to format event timestamps.

    • Syntax: literal
    • Default: "rfc3339"
    • Enum, must be one of: "rfc3339" "unix"
    • View examples
• commonrequiredstring

  endpoint

  The endpoint to send data to.

  • Syntax: literal
  • View examples
• commonoptionaltable

  healthcheck

  Health check options for the sink. See Health checks for more info.

  • commonoptionalbool

    enabled

    Enables/disables the healthcheck upon Vector boot.

    • Default: true
    • View examples
• commonrequiredstring

  namespace

  A prefix that will be added to all logs names.

  • Syntax: literal
  • View examples
• commonrequiredstring

  org

  Specifies the destination organization for writes into InfluxDB 2.

  • Syntax: literal
  • View examples
• commonoptionalstring

  password

  Sets the password for authentication if you’ve enabled authentication for the write into InfluxDB 1.

  • Syntax: literal
  • View examples
• optionaltable

  request

  Configures the sink request behavior.

  • optionaltable

    adaptive_concurrency

    Configure the adaptive concurrency algorithms. These values have been tuned by optimizing simulated results. In general you should not need to adjust these.

    • optionalfloat

      decrease_ratio

      The fraction of the current value to set the new concurrency limit when decreasing the limit. Valid values are greater than 0 and less than 1. Smaller values cause the algorithm to scale back rapidly when latency increases. Note that the new limit is rounded down after applying this ratio.

      • Default: 0.9
    • optionalfloat

      ewma_alpha

      The adaptive concurrency algorithm uses an exponentially weighted moving average (EWMA) of past RTT measurements as a reference to compare with the current RTT. This value controls how heavily new measurements are weighted compared to older ones. Valid values are greater than 0 and less than 1. Smaller values cause this reference to adjust more slowly, which may be useful if a service has unusually high response variability.

      • Default: 0.7
    • optionalfloat

      rtt_threshold_ratio

      When comparing the past RTT average to the current measurements, we ignore changes that are less than this ratio higher than the past RTT. Valid values are greater than or equal to 0. Larger values cause the algorithm to ignore larger increases in the RTT.

      • Default: 0.05
  • commonoptionaluint

    concurrency

    The maximum number of in-flight requests allowed at any given time, or "adaptive" to allow Vector to automatically set the limit based on current network and service conditions.

    • Default: 5 (requests)
  • commonoptionaluint

    rate_limit_duration_secs

    The time window, in seconds, used for the rate_limit_num option.

    • Default: 1 (seconds)
  • commonoptionaluint

    rate_limit_num

    The maximum number of requests allowed within the rate_limit_duration_secs time window.

    • Default: 5
  • optionaluint

    retry_attempts

    The maximum number of retries to make for failed requests. The default, for all intents and purposes, represents an infinite number of retries.

    • Default: 18446744073709552000
  • optionaluint

    retry_initial_backoff_secs

    The amount of time to wait before attempting the first retry for a failed request. Once, the first retry has failed the fibonacci sequence will be used to select future backoffs.

    • Default: 1 (seconds)
  • optionaluint

    retry_max_duration_secs

    The maximum amount of time, in seconds, to wait between retries.

    • Default: 10 (seconds)
  • commonoptionaluint

    timeout_secs

    The maximum time a request can take before being aborted. It is highly recommended that you do not lower this value below the service's internal timeout, as this could create orphaned requests, pile on retries, and result in duplicate data downstream. See Buffers & batches for more info.

    • Default: 60 (seconds)
• commonoptionalstring

  retention_policy_name

  Sets the target retention policy for the write into InfluxDB 1.

  • Syntax: literal
  • View examples
• optional[string]

  tags

  A set of additional fields that will be attached to each LineProtocol as a tag. Note: If the set of tag values has high cardinality this also increase cardinality in InfluxDB. See Mapping Log Fields for more info.

  • View examples
• commonrequiredstring

  token

  Authentication token for InfluxDB 2.

  • Syntax: literal
  • View examples
• commonoptionalstring

  username

  Sets the username for authentication if you’ve enabled authentication for the write into InfluxDB 1.

  • Syntax: literal
  • View examples

Telemetry

This component provides the following metrics that can be retrieved through the internal_metrics source. See the metrics section in the monitoring page for more info.

• counter

  events_in_total

  The total number of events accepted by this component. This metric includes the following tags:

  • component_kind - The Vector component kind.

  • component_name - The Vector component ID.

  • component_type - The Vector component type.

  • instance - The Vector instance identified by host and port.

  • job - The name of the job producing Vector metrics.

• counter

  events_out_total

  The total number of events emitted by this component. This metric includes the following tags:

  • component_kind - The Vector component kind.

  • component_name - The Vector component ID.

  • component_type - The Vector component type.

  • instance - The Vector instance identified by host and port.

  • job - The name of the job producing Vector metrics.

How It Works

Buffers & batches

This component buffers & batches data as shown in the diagram above. You'll notice that Vector treats these concepts differently, instead of treating them as global concepts, Vector treats them as sink specific concepts. This isolates sinks, ensuring services disruptions are contained and delivery guarantees are honored.

Batches are flushed when 1 of 2 conditions are met:

1. The batch age meets or exceeds the configured timeout_secs.
2. The batch size meets or exceeds the configured <% if component.options.batch.children.respond_to?(:max_size) %>max_size<% else %>max_events<% end %>.

Buffers are controlled via the buffer.* options.

Health checks

Health checks ensure that the downstream service is accessible and ready to accept data. This check is performed upon sink initialization. If the health check fails an error will be logged and Vector will proceed to start.

Require health checks

If you'd like to exit immediately upon a health check failure, you can pass the --require-healthy flag:

vector --config /etc/vector/vector.toml --require-healthy

Disable health checks

If you'd like to disable health checks for this sink you can set the healthcheck option to false.

Mapping Log Fields

InfluxDB uses line protocol to write data points. It is a text-based format that provides the measurement, tag set, field set, and timestamp of a data point.

A Log Event event contains an arbitrary set of fields (key/value pairs) that describe the event.

The following matrix outlines how Log Event fields are mapped into InfluxDB Line Protocol:

Field	Line Protocol
host	tag
message	field
source_type	tag
timestamp	timestamp
[custom-key]	field

The default behavior can be overridden by a tags configuration.

Mapping Example

The following event:

{
  "host": "my.host.com",
  "message": "<13>Feb 13 20:07:26 74794bfb6795 root[8539]: i am foobar",
  "timestamp": "2019-11-01T21:15:47+00:00",
  "custom_field": "custom_value"
}

Will be mapped to Influx's line protocol:

ns.vector,host=my.host.com,metric_type=logs custom_field="custom_value",message="<13>Feb 13 20:07:26 74794bfb6795 root[8539]: i am foobar" 1572642947000000000

Partitioning

Vector supports dynamic configuration values through a simple template syntax. If an option supports templating, it will be noted with a badge and you can use event fields to create dynamic values. For example:

vector.toml

[sinks.my-sink]
    dynamic_option = "application={{ application_id }}"

In the above example, the application_id for each event will be used to partition outgoing data.

Rate limits & adapative concurrency

Adaptive Request Concurrency (ARC)

Adaptive Requst Concurrency is a feature of Vector that does away with static rate limits and automatically optimizes HTTP concurrency limits based on downstream service responses. The underlying mechanism is a feedback loop inspired by TCP congestion control algorithms. Checkout the announcement blog post,

We highly recommend enabling this feature as it improves performance and reliability of Vector and the systems it communicates with.

To enable, set the request.concurrency option to adaptive:

vector.toml

[sinks.my-sink]
  request.concurrency = "adaptive"

Static rate limits

If Adaptive Request Concurrency is not for you, you can manually set static rate limits with the request.rate_limit_duration_secs, request.rate_limit_num, and request.concurrency options:

vector.toml

[sinks.my-sink]
  request.rate_limit_duration_secs = 1
  request.rate_limit_num = 10
  request.concurrency = 10

Retry policy

Vector will retry failed requests (status == 429, >= 500, and != 501). Other responses will not be retried. You can control the number of retry attempts and backoff rate with the request.retry_attempts and request.retry_backoff_secs options.

State

This component is stateless, meaning its behavior is consistent across each input.