Monitoring Metrics of NGINX Ingress Controller

You can use Prometheus and Grafana to observe the metrics of NGINX Ingress Controller.

The following uses Prometheus as an example to describe how to view the metrics of NGINX Ingress Controller of a cluster.

Accessing Prometheus
(Optional) Bind a LoadBalancer Service to Prometheus so that Prometheus can be accessed from external networks.
Monitoring Metrics of NGINX Ingress Controller
Enable metric collection for NGINX Ingress Controller so that NGINX Ingress Controller metrics are automatically reported.

Prerequisites

The cloud native cluster monitoring add-on 3.9.5 or later has been installed in the cluster. For details about this add-on, see Cloud Native Cluster Monitoring.
NGINX Ingress Controller 2.5.4 or later has been installed in the cluster, and metric collection has been enabled. For details about this add-on, see NGINX Ingress Controller.

Accessing Prometheus

After the cloud native cluster monitoring add-on is installed, you can deploy workloads and Services. The Prometheus server will be deployed as a StatefulSet in the monitoring namespace.

You can create a public network LoadBalancer Service so that Prometheus can be accessed from external networks.

Log in to the CCE console and click the name of the cluster with Prometheus installed to access the cluster console. In the navigation pane, choose Services & Ingresses.

Click Create from YAML in the upper right corner to create a public network LoadBalancer Service.

apiVersion: v1
kind: Service
metadata:
  name: prom-lb     # Service name, which is customizable.
  namespace: monitoring
  labels:
    app: prometheus
    component: server
  annotations:
    kubernetes.io/elb.id: 038ff***     # Replace it with the ID of the public network load balancer in the VPC that the cluster belongs to.
spec:
  ports:
    - name: cce-service-0
      protocol: TCP
      port: 88             # Service port, which is customizable.
      targetPort: 9090     # Default Prometheus port. Retain the default value.
  selector:                # The label selector can be adjusted based on the label of a Prometheus server instance.
    app.kubernetes.io/name: prometheus
    prometheus: server
  type: LoadBalancer

After the Service is created, enter Public IP address of the load balancer:Service port in the address box of the browser to access Prometheus.

Figure 1 Accessing Prometheus
Choose Status > Targets to view the targets monitored by Prometheus.

Figure 2 Viewing monitored targets

Monitoring Metrics of NGINX Ingress Controller

Figure 3 Viewing the metrics of NGINX Ingress Controller
Click to enlarge

**Table 1** Metrics of NGINX Ingress Controller
Metric	Type	Description
nginx_ingress_controller_bytes_sent	Basic metric	Number of bytes sent to the client
nginx_ingress_controller_connect_duration_seconds	Basic metric	Duration for connecting to the upstream server
nginx_ingress_controller_header_duration_seconds	Basic metric	Time required for receiving the first header from the upstream server
nginx_ingress_controller_ingress_upstream_latency_seconds	Basic metric	Upstream service latency
nginx_ingress_controller_request_duration_seconds	Basic metric	Time required for processing a request, in milliseconds
nginx_ingress_controller_request_size	Basic metric	Length of a request, including the request line, header, and body
nginx_ingress_controller_requests	Basic metric	Total number of client requests
nginx_ingress_controller_response_duration_seconds	Basic metric	Time required for receiving the response from the upstream server
nginx_ingress_controller_response_size	Basic metric	Length of a response, including the request line, header, and request body
nginx_ingress_controller_nginx_process_connections	Basic metric	Number of client connections in the {active, reading, writing, or waiting} state
nginx_ingress_controller_nginx_process_connections_total	Basic metric	Total number of connections in the {accepted or handled} state
nginx_ingress_controller_nginx_process_cpu_seconds_total	Basic metric	CPU usage, in seconds
nginx_ingress_controller_nginx_process_num_procs	Basic metric	Number of processes
nginx_ingress_controller_nginx_process_oldest_start_time_seconds	Basic metric	Start time, in seconds elapsed since 00:00:00 on January 1, 1970
nginx_ingress_controller_nginx_process_read_bytes_total	Basic metric	Number of bytes read
nginx_ingress_controller_nginx_process_requests_total	Basic metric	Total number of client requests
nginx_ingress_controller_nginx_process_resident_memory_bytes	Basic metric	Number of bytes of resident memory in use
nginx_ingress_controller_nginx_process_virtual_memory_bytes	Basic metric	Number of bytes of virtual memory in use
nginx_ingress_controller_nginx_process_write_bytes_total	Basic metric	Number of bytes written
nginx_ingress_controller_build_info	Basic metric	A metric with a constant '1' labeled with information about the build
nginx_ingress_controller_check_success	Basic metric	Cumulative count of syntax check operations of NGINX Ingress Controller
nginx_ingress_controller_config_hash	Basic metric	Hash value of running NGINX Ingress Controller
nginx_ingress_controller_config_last_reload_successful	Basic metric	Whether the last configuration reload attempt was successful
nginx_ingress_controller_config_last_reload_successful_timestamp_seconds	Basic metric	Timestamp of the last successful configuration reload
nginx_ingress_controller_ssl_certificate_info	Basic metric	All labels associated with a certificate
nginx_ingress_controller_success	Basic metric	Cumulative count of reload operations of NGINX Ingress Controller
nginx_ingress_controller_orphan_ingress	Basic metric	Status of an orphaned ingress (1 indicates an orphaned ingress). namespace: character string used to identify the namespace of the ingress ingress: ingress name type: status of the ingress. The value can be no-service or no-endpoint.
nginx_ingress_controller_admission_config_size	Basic metric	Size of the tested configuration
nginx_ingress_controller_admission_render_duration	Basic metric	Time required for the admission controller to render an ingress
nginx_ingress_controller_admission_render_ingresses	Basic metric	Length of an ingress rendered by the admission controller
nginx_ingress_controller_admission_roundtrip_duration	Basic metric	Complete duration of the admission controller at the time to process a new event (float seconds)
nginx_ingress_controller_admission_tested_duration	Basic metric	Time required for admission controller tests (float seconds)
nginx_ingress_controller_admission_tested_ingresses	Basic metric	Length of an ingress handled by the admission controller

When NGINX Ingress Controller is heavily loaded, memory leakage occurs when full metric collection is enabled. For details, see the community issue. It has been verified that the memory usage increase can be effectively suppressed after the following metrics are shielded. To prevent service loss caused by memory leakage, NGINX Ingress Controller shields the following metrics by default. We will continue to pay attention to the latest news in the community and fix this issue in a timely manner.