1. Docs
2. Manage Data Volume
3. Sample with Honeycomb Refinery
4. Monitor

Monitor Honeycomb Refinery

Table of Contents

When scaling Refinery, use Refinery’s metrics to determine if adjustment is needed in your general configuration and sampling rules.

Understanding Refinery’s Metrics 

Refinery emits a number of metrics to give indications about its health as well as its trace throughput and sampling statistics. These metrics can be exposed to Prometheus or sent to Honeycomb, which will need configuration within config.yaml. Below is a summary of recorded metrics by type.

Refinery System Metrics 

Refinery’s system metrics include memory_inuse, num_goroutines, hostname, and process_uptime_seconds. We recommend monitoring process_uptime_seconds alongside memory_inuse. If you see unexpected restarts, this could indicate that the process is hitting memory constraints.

Collector Metrics 

The collector refers to Refinery’s mechanism that intercepts and collects traces in a circular buffer. Ideally, it holds onto each trace until the root span has arrived. At that point, Refinery sends the trace to the sampler to make a decision whether to keep or drop the trace. In some cases, Refinery may have to make a sampling decision on the trace before the root span arrives.

collect_cache_buffer_overrun

This value should remain zero; a positive value could indicate the need to grow the size of the collector’s circular buffer. (The size of the circular buffer is set via the configuration field CacheCapacity.) Note that if collect_cache_buffer_overrun is increasing, it does not necessarily mean that the cache is full. You may see this value increasing while collect_cache_entries values remain low in comparison to collect_cache_capacity. This is due to the circular nature of the buffer, and can occur when traces stay unfinished for a long time in the face of high throughput traffic. Anytime a trace arrives that persists for longer than the time it takes to accept the same number of traces as collect_cache_capacity (also known as make a full circle around the ring), a cache buffer overrun is triggered. Setting CacheCapacity therefore depends not only on trace throughput but also on trace duration (both of which are tracked via other metrics). When a cache buffer overrun is triggered, it means that a trace has been sent to Honeycomb before it has been completed. Depending on your tracing strategy, this could result in an incorrect sampling decision for the trace. For example, if all the fields have been received that you have sampling rules set up for, the decision could be correct. However, if some of those fields have not been received yet, the sampling decision could be incorrect.

collect_cache_capacity

Equivalent to the value set in your configuration for CacheCapacity. Use this value in conjunction with collect_cache_entries to see how full the cache is getting over time.

collect_cache_entries_*

Records avg, max, min, p50, p95, and p99. Indicates how full the cache is over time.

collector_incoming_queue_*

Records avg, max, min, p50, p95, and p99. Indicates how full the queue of spans is that were received from outside of Refinery and need to be processed by the collector.

collector_peer_queue_*

Records avg, max, min, p50, p95, and p99. Indicates how full the queue of spans is that were received from other Refinery peers and need to be processed by the collector.

Sampler Metrics 

Sampler metrics will vary with the type of sampler you have configured. Generally, there will be metrics on the number of traces dropped, the number of traces kept, and the sample rate. The fields below are an example of the metrics when the dynamic sampler is configured:

dynsampler_num_dropped

The number of traces dropped by the sampler.

dynsampler_num_kept

The number of traces kept by the sampler.

dynsampler_sample_rate_*

Records avg, max, min, p50, p95, and p99 of the sample rate reported by the configured sampler.

Incoming and Peer Router Metrics 

A Refinery host may receive spans both from outside Refinery and from other hosts within the Refinery cluster. In the following fields, incoming refers to the process that is listening for incoming events from outside Refinery and peer refers to the process that is listening for events redirected from a peer. upstream refers to the Honeycomb API.

incoming_router_batch, peer_router_batch

These values increment when Refinery’s batch event processing endpoint is hit.

incoming_router_event, peer_router_event

These values increment when Refinery’s single event processing endpoint is hit.

incoming_router_dropped, peer_router_dropped

These values increment when Refinery fails to add new spans to a receive buffer when processing new events. These values should be monitored closely as they indicate that spans are being dropped.

incoming_router_span, peer_router_span

These values increment when Refinery accepts events that are part of a trace, also known as spans.

incoming_router_nonspan, peer_router_nonspan

These values increment when Refinery accepts other non-span events that are not part of a trace.

The following fields can be used to get a better idea of the traffic that is flowing from incoming sources vs. from peer sources, and to track any errors from the Honeycomb API:

• incoming_router_peer, peer_router_peer
• incoming_router_proxied, peer_router_proxied
• peer_enqueue_errors, upstream_enqueue_errors
• peer_response_20x, upstream_response_20x
• peer_response_errors, upstream_response_errors

Trace Metrics 

trace_accepted

This field indicates that a new trace has been added to the collector’s cache.

trace_duration_ms_*

Records avg, max, min, p50, p95, and p99. This value can help determine the appropriate configuration for CacheCapacity. For more information, see collect_cache_buffer_overrun.

trace_send_dropped

Indicates the number of traces that were dropped by the sampler. When dry run mode is enabled, this metric will increment for each trace. In this case, you can still see the result of sampling decisions by filtering by the configured field for DryRunFieldName.

trace_send_kept

Indicates the number of traces that were kept by the sampler. When dry run mode is enabled, this metric will remain 0, reflecting that we are sending all traces to Honeycomb. In this case, you can still see the result of sampling decisions by filtering by the configured field for DryRunFieldName.

trace_send_has_root

Indicates that the trace was fully finished when it was sent. This is generally what you want to happen, since if the trace was not complete when it was sent, this could indicate an incorrect sampling decision based on your criteria.

trace_send_no_root

Indicates that traces are being sent before they are completed. This field often correlates with collect_cache_buffer_overrun. Another reason why this could happen is if a node shuts down unexpectedly and sends the traces it currently has in its cache.

trace_sent_cache_hit

Indicates that Refinery received a span belonging to a trace that had already been sent. In this case, Refinery checks the sampling decision for the trace and either sends the span along to Honeycomb immediately, or drops the span.

trace_span_count_*

Records avg, max, min, p50, p95, and p99. Use this field as an indication of how large your traces are. Note that if you are seeing a high number of trace_send_no_root, the trace_span_count_* values may be undercounting, since this indicates that traces were not fully complete before they were sent.

Stress Relief Metrics 

The Stress Relief system monitors these metrics to calculate the current stress level of the Refinery cluster:

• collector_peer_queue_length
• collector_incoming_queue_length
• libhoney_peer_queue_length
• libhoney_upstream_queue_length
• memory_heap_allocation

The stress level is calculated and represented as the following two metrics:

stress_level: a gauge from 0 to 100, where 0 is no stress and 100 is maximum stress. By default, at stress_level 90 Stress Relief will activate, and then deactivate once it reaches 75. These values are configurable as ActivationLevel and DeactivationLevel in the Refinery configuration file.

stress_relief_activated: a gauge at 0 or 1.

Did you find what you were looking for?

Yes No

---

If you have questions, join our Pollinators Community Slack!
Pro/Enterprise users can visit Honeycomb Support or email support@honeycomb.io.

Submit