collect

Kubernetes Logs Source

The Vector kubernetes_logs source collects all log data for Kubernetes Nodes, automatically enriching data with Kubernetes metadata via the Kubernetes API.

Requirements

Setup

This component is part of a larger setup strategy for the Kubernetes platform.

Kubernetes Installation

Configuration

[sources.my_source_id]
  type = "kubernetes_logs" # required
9 items
  • optionaltable

    annotation_fields

    Configuration for how the events are annotated with Pod metadata.

    • optionalstring

      container_image

      Event field for Container image.

      • Syntax: literal
      • Default: "kubernetes.container_image"
    • optionalstring

      container_name

      Event field for Container name.

      • Syntax: literal
      • Default: "kubernetes.container_name"
    • optionalstring

      pod_ip

      Event field for Pod IPv4 Address.

      • Syntax: literal
      • Default: "kubernetes.pod_ip"
    • optionalstring

      pod_ips

      Event field for Pod IPv4 and IPv6 Addresses.

      • Syntax: literal
      • Default: "kubernetes.pod_ips"
    • optionalstring

      pod_labels

      Event field for Pod labels.

      • Syntax: literal
      • Default: "kubernetes.pod_labels"
    • optionalstring

      pod_name

      Event field for Pod name.

      • Syntax: literal
      • Default: "kubernetes.pod_name"
    • optionalstring

      pod_namespace

      Event field for Pod namespace.

      • Syntax: literal
      • Default: "kubernetes.pod_namespace"
    • optionalstring

      pod_node_name

      Event field for Pod node_name.

      • Syntax: literal
      • Default: "kubernetes.pod_node_name"
    • optionalstring

      pod_uid

      Event field for Pod uid.

      • Syntax: literal
      • Default: "kubernetes.pod_uid"
  • optionalbool

    auto_partial_merge

    Automatically merge partial messages into a single event. Partial here is in respect to messages that were split by the Kubernetes Container Runtime log driver.

    • Default: true
    • View examples
  • optionalstring

    data_dir

    The directory used to persist file checkpoint positions. By default, the global data_dir option is used. Please make sure the Vector project has write permissions to this dir. See Checkpointing for more info.

    This field accepts a valid file system path.

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

    exclude_paths_glob_patterns

    A list of glob patterns to exclude from reading the files. See Filtering for more info.

    • Default: []
    • View examples
  • optionalstring

    extra_field_selector

    Specifies the field selector to filter Pods with, to be used in addition to the built-in Node filter. The name of the Kubernetes Node this Vector instance runs at. Configured to use an env var by default, to be evaluated to a value provided by Kubernetes at Pod deploy time. See Filtering for more info.

    • Syntax: literal
    • Default: ""
    • View examples
  • optionalstring

    extra_label_selector

    Specifies the label selector to filter Pods with, to be used in addition to the built-in vector.dev/exclude filter. See Filtering for more info.

    • Syntax: literal
    • Default: ""
    • View examples
  • optionalstring

    kube_config_file

    Optional path to a kubeconfig file readable by Vector. If not set, Vector will try to connect to Kubernetes using in-cluster configuration.

    • Syntax: literal
  • optionalstring

    self_node_name

    The name of the Kubernetes Node this Vector instance runs at. Configured to use an env var by default, to be evaluated to a value provided by Kubernetes at Pod deploy time.

    • Syntax: literal
    • Default: "${VECTOR_SELF_NODE_NAME}"
  • optionalstring

    timezone

    The name of the time zone to apply to timestamp conversions that do not contain an explicit time zone. This overrides the global timezone option. The time zone name may be any name in the TZ database, or local to indicate system local time.

    • Syntax: literal
    • Default: "local"
    • View examples

Output

This component outputs log events with the following fields:

{
  "file" : "/var/log/pods/pod-namespace_pod-name_pod-uid/container/1.log",
  "kubernetes.container_image" : "busybox:1.30",
  "kubernetes.container_name" : "coredns",
  "kubernetes.pod_ip" : "192.168.1.1",
  "kubernetes.pod_ips" : "192.168.1.1",
  "kubernetes.pod_name" : "coredns-qwertyuiop-qwert",
  "kubernetes.pod_namespace" : "kube-system",
  "kubernetes.pod_node_name" : "minikube",
  "kubernetes.pod_uid" : "ba46d8c9-9541-4f6b-bbf9-d23b36f2f136",
  "message" : "53.126.150.246 - - [01/Oct/2020:11:25:58 -0400] \"GET /disintermediate HTTP/2.0\" 401 20308",
  "mylabel" : "myvalue",
  "source_type" : "kubernetes_logs",
  "stream" : "stdout",
  "timestamp" : "2020-10-10T17:07:36+00:00"
}
14 items
  • commonrequiredstring

    file

    The absolute path of originating file.

    • Syntax: literal
    • View examples
  • commonoptionalstring

    kubernetes.container_image

    Container image.

    • Syntax: literal
    • View examples
  • commonoptionalstring

    kubernetes.container_name

    Container name.

    • Syntax: literal
    • View examples
  • commonoptionalstring

    kubernetes.pod_ip

    Pod IPv4 address.

    • Syntax: literal
    • View examples
  • commonoptionalstring

    kubernetes.pod_ips

    Pod IPv4 and IPv6 addresses.

    • Syntax: literal
    • View examples
  • commonoptionaltable

    kubernetes.pod_labels

    Pod labels name.

  • commonoptionalstring

    kubernetes.pod_name

    Pod name.

    • Syntax: literal
    • View examples
  • commonoptionalstring

    kubernetes.pod_namespace

    Pod namespace.

    • Syntax: literal
    • View examples
  • commonoptionalstring

    kubernetes.pod_node_name

    Pod node name.

    • Syntax: literal
    • View examples
  • commonoptionalstring

    kubernetes.pod_uid

    Pod uid.

    • Syntax: literal
    • View examples
  • commonrequiredstring

    message

    The raw line from the Pod log file.

    • Syntax: literal
    • View examples
  • commonrequiredstring

    source_type

    The name of the source type.

    • Syntax: literal
    • View examples
  • commonrequiredstring

    stream

    The name of the stream the log line was sumbitted to.

    • Syntax: literal
    • View examples
  • commonrequiredtimestamp

    timestamp

    The exact time the event was ingested into Vector.

    • 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

    k8s_format_picker_edge_cases_total

    The total number of edge cases encountered while picking format of the Kubernetes log message. 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

    k8s_docker_format_parse_failures_total

    The total number of failures to parse a message as a JSON object. 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

    k8s_event_annotation_failures_total

    The total number of failures to annotate Vector events with Kubernetes Pod metadata. 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

    processed_bytes_total

    The total number of bytes processed by the 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.

  • counter

    processed_events_total

    The total number of events processed 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.

    • file - The file that produced the error

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

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

Examples

Given the following input:

F1015 11:01:46.499073       1 main.go:39] error getting server version: Get "https://10.96.0.1:443/version?timeout=32s": dial tcp 10.96.0.1:443: connect: network is unreachable

And the following configuration:

vector.toml
[sources.kubernetes_logs]
type = "kubernetes_logs"

The following Vector log event will be output:

{
  "file": "/var/log/pods/kube-system_storage-provisioner_93bde4d0-9731-4785-a80e-cd27ba8ad7c2/storage-provisioner/1.log",
  "kubernetes.container_image": "gcr.io/k8s-minikube/storage-provisioner:v3",
  "kubernetes.container_name": "storage-provisioner",
  "kubernetes.pod_ip": "192.168.1.1",
  "kubernetes.pod_ips": [
    "192.168.1.1",
    "::1"
  ],
  "kubernetes.pod_labels": {
    "addonmanager.kubernetes.io/mode": "Reconcile",
    "gcp-auth-skip-secret": "true",
    "integration-test": "storage-provisioner"
  },
  "kubernetes.pod_name": "storage-provisioner",
  "kubernetes.pod_namespace": "kube-system",
  "kubernetes.pod_node_name": "minikube",
  "kubernetes.pod_uid": "93bde4d0-9731-4785-a80e-cd27ba8ad7c2",
  "message": "F1015 11:01:46.499073       1 main.go:39] error getting server version: Get \"https://10.96.0.1:443/version?timeout=32s\": dial tcp 10.96.0.1:443: connect: network is unreachable",
  "source_type": "kubernetes_logs",
  "stream": "stderr",
  "timestamp": "2020-10-15T11:01:46.499555308Z"
}

How It Works

Checkpointing

Vector checkpoints the current read position after each successful read. This ensures that Vector resumes where it left off if restarted, preventing data from being read twice. The checkpoint positions are stored in the data directory which is specified via the global data_dir option, but can be overridden via the data_dir option in the file source directly.

Container exclusion

The kubernetes_logs source can skip the logs from the individual containers of a particular Pod. Add an annotation vector.dev/exclude-containers to the Pod, and enumerate the names of all the containers to exclude in the value of the annotation like so:

vector.dev/exclude-containers: "container1,container2"

This annotation will make Vector skip logs originating from the container1 and container2 of the Pod marked with the annotation, while logs from other containers in the Pod will still be collected.

Context

By default, the kubernetes_logs source will augment events with helpful context keys as shown in the "Output" section.

Enrichment

Vector will enrich data with Kubernetes context. A comprehensive list of fields can be found in the kubernetes_logs source output docs.

Filtering

Vector provides rich filtering options for Kubernetes log collection:

Kubernetes API access control

Vector requires access to the Kubernetes API. Specifically, the kubernetes_logs source uses the /api/v1/pods endpoint to "watch" the pods from all namespaces.

Modern Kubernetes clusters run with RBAC (role-based access control) scheme. RBAC-enabled clusters require some configuration to grant Vector the authorization to access the Kubernetes API endpoints. As RBAC is currently the standard way of controlling access to the Kubernetes API, we ship the necessary configuration out of the box: see ClusterRole, ClusterRoleBinding and a ServiceAccount in our kubectl YAML config, and the rbac configuration at the Helm chart.

If your cluster doesn't use any access control scheme and doesn't restrict access to the Kubernetes API, you don't need to do any extra configuration - Vector willjust work.

Clusters using legacy ABAC scheme are not officially supported (although Vector might work if you configure access properly) - we encourage switching to RBAC. If you use a custom access control scheme - make sure Vector Pod/ServiceAccount is granted access to the /api/v1/pods resource.

Kubernetes API communication

Vector communicates with the Kubernetes API to enrich the data it collects with Kubernetes context. Therefore, Vector must have access to communicate with the Kubernetes API server. If Vector is running in a Kubernetes cluster then Vector will connect to that cluster using the Kubernetes provided access information.

In addition to access, Vector implements proper desync handling to ensure communication is safe and reliable. This ensures that Vector will not overwhelm the Kubernetes API or compromise its stability.

Partial message merging

Vector, by default, will merge partial messages that are split due to the Docker size limit. For everything else, it is recommended to use the reduce transform which offers the ability to handle custom merging of things like stacktraces.

Pod exclusion

By default, the kubernetes_logs source will skip logs from the Pods that have a vector.dev/exclude: "true" label. You can configure additional exclusion rules via label or field selectors, see the available options.

Pod removal

To ensure all data is collected, Vector will continue to collect logs from the Pod for some time after its removal. This ensures that Vector obtains some of the most important data, such as crash details.

Resource limits

Vector recommends the following resource limits.

Agent resource limits

If deploy Vector as an agent (collecting data for each of your Nodes), then we recommend the following limits:

resources:
  requests:
    memory: "64Mi"
    cpu: "500m"
  limits:
    memory: "1024Mi"
    cpu: "6000m"

As with all Kubernetes resource limit recommendations, use these as a reference point and adjust as ncessary. If your configured Vector pipeline is complex, you may need more resources. If you have a pipeline you may need less.

State

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

State management

Agent state management

For the agent role, Vector stores its state at the host-mapped dir with a static path, so if it's redeployed it'll continue from where it was interrupted.

Testing & reliability

Vector is tested extensively against Kubernetes. In addition to Kubernetes being Vector's most popular installation method, Vector implements a comprehensive end-to-end test suite for all minor Kubernetes versions starting with `1.14.

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