For the complete documentation index, see llms.txt. Markdown versions of all docs pages are available by appending .md to any docs URL.

Install an OpenTelemetry stack with Grafana, Loki, and Tempo for observability.

Deploy an open source observability stack based on OpenTelemetry (OTel) that includes the following components:

• Logs: Centralized log collection and storage with Grafana Loki.
• Traces: Distributed tracing with Grafana Tempo.
• Metrics: Time-series metrics collection with Prometheus.
• Collection: Unified telemetry collection with OpenTelemetry Collector.
• Visualization: Comprehensive dashboards with Grafana.

About

Observability tools are essential to gain insight into the health and performance of your gateway proxies. OpenTelemetry (OTel) is a flexible, open source framework that provides a set of APIs, libraries, and instrumentation to help capture and export observability data. However, you can follow a similar process as this guide to use the tools that you prefer.

Observability data types

Observability is built on three core pillars as described in the following table. By combining these three data types, you get a complete picture of your system’s health and performance.

Architecture

Review the following diagram to understand the architecture of the observability stack.

The gateway proxy acts as the primary telemetry generator. OTel Collectors route logs and traces to their storage backends, while Prometheus scrapes metrics directly from the gateway pods via PodMonitor and ServiceMonitor resources.

    flowchart TD
    A["1- Application Traffic"] --> B["2- Gateway proxy"]
    B -->|"Logs & Traces (OTLP)"| C["3- OTel Collectors"]
    B -->|"Metrics (PodMonitor/\nServiceMonitor)"| D3["4- Prometheus"]
    C --> D1["4- Loki"]
    C --> D2["4- Tempo"]
    D1 --> E["5- Grafana"]
    D2 --> E
    D3 --> E
  

Architecture data flow:

1. Application Traffic: Applications send requests to the gateway proxy.
2. Gateway Processing: The gateway proxy processes requests and emits telemetry on two paths: it pushes logs and traces to the OTel Collectors via OTLP, and exposes metrics on dedicated ports for Prometheus to scrape.
3. Telemetry Collection: OTel Collectors receive logs and traces and route them to Loki and Tempo. Prometheus scrapes the control plane and proxy metrics endpoints directly via PodMonitor and ServiceMonitor resources.
4. Data Storage:
   • Logs go to Loki for log aggregation and storage.
   • Traces go to Tempo for distributed tracing storage.
   • Metrics go to Prometheus for time-series metrics storage.
5. Visualization: Grafana queries all three storage backends as data sources to create unified dashboards.

More considerations

Metrics collection: Prometheus scrapes the gateway control plane and proxy metrics endpoints directly via PodMonitor and ServiceMonitor resources (pull model). Logs and traces use the push model: the gateway proxy pushes OTLP data to the OTel Collectors, which forward them to Loki and Tempo respectively.

Debug exporter: The example pipelines in both OTel collectors set up the debug exporter. This exporter is useful for testing and validation purposes. However, for production scenarios, remove this exporter to avoid performance impacts.

Before you begin

Step 1: Install Grafana Loki and Tempo

Grafana is a suite of open source tools that help you analyze, visualize, and monitor data in your cluster. For the OTel stack, you install the following Grafana components:

• Loki: A log aggregation system that indexes metadata about your logs as a set of labels, not the actual log contents. This way, Loki is more cost-efficient and performant than traditional log aggregation systems.

  Tip

  Loki works best when you use structured logging in your applications, such as JSON format.

• Tempo: A distributed tracing system that stores trace data in object storage (like Amazon S3) and integrates seamlessly with Grafana for visualization. Distributed tracing helps you see how requests move through a microservices environment, which helps you identify performance bottlenecks, debug issues, and otherwise monitor your system’s health to ensure SLA compliance.

Steps to install:

1. Deploy Grafana Loki to your cluster.

   helm upgrade --install loki loki \
   --repo https://grafana.github.io/helm-charts \
   --version 6.24.0 \
   --namespace telemetry \
   --create-namespace \
   --values - <<EOF
   loki:
     commonConfig:
       replication_factor: 1
     schemaConfig:
       configs:
         - from: 2024-04-01
           store: tsdb
           object_store: s3
           schema: v13
           index:
             prefix: loki_index_
             period: 24h
     auth_enabled: false
   singleBinary:
     replicas: 1
   minio:
     enabled: true
   gateway:
     enabled: false
   test:
     enabled: false
   monitoring:
     selfMonitoring:
       enabled: false
       grafanaAgent:
         installOperator: false
   lokiCanary:
     enabled: false
   limits_config:
     allow_structured_metadata: true
   memberlist:
     service:
       publishNotReadyAddresses: true
   deploymentMode: SingleBinary
   backend:
     replicas: 0
   read:
     replicas: 0
   write:
     replicas: 0
   ingester:
     replicas: 0
   querier:
     replicas: 0
   queryFrontend:
     replicas: 0
   queryScheduler:
     replicas: 0
   distributor:
     replicas: 0
   compactor:
     replicas: 0
   indexGateway:
     replicas: 0
   bloomCompactor:
     replicas: 0
   bloomGateway:
     replicas: 0
   EOF

2. Deploy Grafana Tempo to your cluster.

   helm upgrade --install tempo tempo \
   --repo https://grafana.github.io/helm-charts \
   --version 1.16.0 \
   --namespace telemetry \
   --create-namespace \
   --values - <<EOF
   persistence:
     enabled: false
   tempo:
     receivers:
       otlp:
         protocols:
           grpc:
             endpoint: 0.0.0.0:4317
   EOF

3. Verify that the Grafana pods are running.

   kubectl get pods -n telemetry -l 'app.kubernetes.io/name in (loki,tempo)'

   Example output:

   NAME                   READY   STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE
   loki-0                 2/2     Running   0          3m45s
   loki-chunks-cache-0    2/2     Running   0          3m45s
   loki-results-cache-0   2/2     Running   0          3m45s
   tempo-0                1/1     Running   0          2m10s
   

Step 2: Install OTel Collectors for logs and traces

The OTel Collectors act as the routing hub for logs and traces. The gateway proxy pushes logs and traces to the collectors via OTLP, and each collector forwards data to Loki for logs and Tempo for traces. Metrics are handled separately. Prometheus scrapes the control plane and agentgateway proxy metrics endpoints directly via PodMonitor and ServiceMonitor resources, which you set up in a later step.

Deploy separate collectors for logs and traces so you can scale and tune each one independently.

1. Deploy the logs collector to process and forward application and access logs.

   helm upgrade --install opentelemetry-collector-logs opentelemetry-collector \
   --repo https://open-telemetry.github.io/opentelemetry-helm-charts \
   --version 0.127.2 \
   --set mode=deployment \
   --set image.repository="otel/opentelemetry-collector-contrib" \
   --set command.name="otelcol-contrib" \
   --namespace=telemetry \
   --create-namespace \
   -f -<<EOF
   config:
     receivers:
       otlp:
         protocols:
           grpc:
             endpoint: 0.0.0.0:4317
           http:
             endpoint: 0.0.0.0:4318
     exporters:
       otlphttp/loki:
         endpoint: http://loki.telemetry.svc.cluster.local:3100/otlp
         tls:
           insecure: true
       debug:
         verbosity: detailed
     service:
       pipelines:
         logs:
           receivers: [otlp]
           processors: [batch]
           exporters: [debug, otlphttp/loki]
   EOF

2. Deploy the traces collector to handle distributed tracing data.

   helm upgrade --install opentelemetry-collector-traces opentelemetry-collector \
   --repo https://open-telemetry.github.io/opentelemetry-helm-charts \
   --version 0.127.2 \
   --set mode=deployment \
   --set image.repository="otel/opentelemetry-collector-contrib" \
   --set command.name="otelcol-contrib" \
   --namespace=telemetry \
   --create-namespace \
   -f -<<EOF
   config:
     receivers:
       otlp:
         protocols:
           grpc:
             endpoint: 0.0.0.0:4317
           http:
             endpoint: 0.0.0.0:4318
     exporters:
       otlp/tempo:
         endpoint: http://tempo.telemetry.svc.cluster.local:4317
         tls:
           insecure: true
       debug:
         verbosity: detailed
     service:
       pipelines:
         traces:
           receivers: [otlp]
           processors: [batch]
           exporters: [debug, otlp/tempo]
   EOF

3. Verify that the OpenTelemetry collector pods are running.

   kubectl get pods -n telemetry -l app.kubernetes.io/name=opentelemetry-collector

   Example output:

   NAME                                               READY   STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE
   opentelemetry-collector-logs-676777487b-wbtkj      1/1     Running   0          56s
   opentelemetry-collector-traces-7696858cf9-tjllx    1/1     Running   0          51s
   

4. Create an AgentgatewayPolicy resource that points the agentgateway proxy at the OTel logs collector that you created.

   kubectl apply -f- <<EOF
   apiVersion: agentgateway.dev/v1alpha1
   kind: AgentgatewayPolicy
   metadata:
     name: access-logs
     namespace: agentgateway-system
   spec:
     targetRefs:
     - group: gateway.networking.k8s.io
       kind: Gateway
       name: agentgateway-proxy
     frontend:
       accessLog:
         otlp:
           backendRef:
             name: opentelemetry-collector-logs
             namespace: telemetry
             port: 4317
           protocol: GRPC
   EOF

5. Create an AgentgatewayPolicy resource that points the agentgateway proxy at the OTel tracing collector that you created.

   kubectl apply -f- <<EOF
   apiVersion: agentgateway.dev/v1alpha1
   kind: AgentgatewayPolicy
   metadata:
     name: tracing
     namespace: agentgateway-system
   spec:
     targetRefs:
       - kind: Gateway
         name: agentgateway-proxy
         group: gateway.networking.k8s.io
     frontend:
       tracing:
         backendRef:
           name: opentelemetry-collector-traces
           namespace: telemetry
           port: 4317
         protocol: GRPC
         randomSampling: "true"
   EOF

Step 3: Set up Prometheus

Prometheus is a monitoring system and time-series database that collects metrics from configured targets at given intervals. It’s the de facto standard for metrics collection in cloud-native environments. You can use the PromQL query language to set up flexible queries and alerts based on the metrics. This guide uses the kube-prometheus-stack Helm chart, which bundles Prometheus, Grafana, and the Prometheus Operator.

1. Deploy Prometheus in your cluster.

   helm upgrade --install kube-prometheus-stack kube-prometheus-stack \
   --repo https://prometheus-community.github.io/helm-charts \
   --version 75.6.1 \
   --namespace telemetry \
   --create-namespace \
   --values - <<EOF
   alertmanager:
     enabled: false
   prometheus:
     prometheusSpec:
       ruleSelectorNilUsesHelmValues: false
       serviceMonitorSelectorNilUsesHelmValues: false
       podMonitorSelectorNilUsesHelmValues: false
       enableFeatures:
         - native-histograms
   grafana:
     enabled: true
     defaultDashboardsEnabled: true
     sidecar:
       dashboards:
         searchNamespace: ALL
     datasources:
      datasources.yaml:
        apiVersion: 1
        datasources:
         - name: Prometheus
           type: prometheus
           uid: prometheus
           access: proxy
           orgId: 1
           url: http://kube-prometheus-stack-prometheus.telemetry:9090
           basicAuth: false
           editable: true
           jsonData:
             httpMethod: GET
             exemplarTraceIdDestinations:
             - name: trace_id
               datasourceUid: tempo
         - name: Tempo
           type: tempo
           access: browser
           basicAuth: false
           orgId: 1
           uid: tempo
           url: http://tempo.telemetry.svc.cluster.local:3100
           isDefault: false
           editable: true
         - orgId: 1
           name: Loki
           type: loki
           typeName: Loki
           access: browser
           url: http://loki.telemetry.svc.cluster.local:3100
           basicAuth: false
           isDefault: false
           editable: true
   EOF

2. Verify that the Prometheus stack’s components are up and running.

   kubectl get pods -n telemetry -l app.kubernetes.io/instance=kube-prometheus-stack

   Example output:

   NAME                                                        READY   STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE
   kube-prometheus-stack-grafana-b546d7755-ks7sn               3/3     Running   0          72s
   kube-prometheus-stack-kube-state-metrics-684f8c7558-xhn2p   1/1     Running   0          72s
   kube-prometheus-stack-operator-6dc9c666c5-pwzkb             1/1     Running   0          72s
   kube-prometheus-stack-prometheus-node-exporter-z7csm        1/1     Running   0          72s
   

Step 4: Enable metrics scraping

Prometheus does not automatically scrape metrics from the agentgateway control plane and proxy metrics endpoints after you installed it. To enable scraping, set monitoring.enabled=true in the agentgateway Helm chart. This setting creates the following resources:

• A ServiceMonitor that scrapes the control plane deployment in the agentgateway-system namespace on port 9092.
• A PodMonitor that scrapes proxy pods in the agentgateway-system namespace for the agentgateway GatewayClass on port 15020.

1. Upgrade your agentgateway installation to enable the monitoring resources.

   helm upgrade -i agentgateway \
     oci://cr.agentgateway.dev/charts/agentgateway \
     --namespace agentgateway-system \
     --version  \
     --reuse-values \
     --set monitoring.enabled=true

   Tip

   The monitoring.serviceMonitor.interval field controls the scrape interval for both the ServiceMonitor and PodMonitor. If not set, both scrape every 15 seconds. To use a different interval, add --set monitoring.serviceMonitor.interval=30s to the command above.

2. Verify that the ServiceMonitor and PodMonitor resources were created.

   kubectl get servicemonitor,podmonitor -n agentgateway-system

   Example output:

   NAME                                                     AGE
   servicemonitor.monitoring.coreos.com/agentgateway        5s
   
   NAME                                                     AGE
   podmonitor.monitoring.coreos.com/agentgateway-proxy      5s
   

   Both resources are created. Prometheus begins scraping on the next collection cycle (15 seconds by default).

Step 4: Explore Grafana dashboards

You can use the pre-built Grafana dashboards to observe the control and data plane statuses.

1. Download the agentgateway Grafana dashboard. This dashboard is maintained in the agentgateway repository and monitors both the control and data planes.

   curl -L "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/agentgateway/agentgateway/main/controller/install/helm/agentgateway/files/agentgateway-dashboard.json" -o agentgateway.json

2. Import the Grafana dashboard.

   kubectl -n telemetry create cm agentgateway-dashboard \
   --from-file=agentgateway.json
   kubectl label -n telemetry cm agentgateway-dashboard grafana_dashboard=1

3. Open and log in to Grafana by using the username admin and password prom-operator.

   Cloud Provider LoadBalancerPort-forward for local testing

   open "http://$(kubectl -n telemetry get svc kube-prometheus-stack-grafana -o jsonpath="{.status.loadBalancer.ingress[0]['hostname','ip']}"):3000"

   1. Port-forward the Grafana service to your local machine.

      kubectl port-forward deployment/kube-prometheus-stack-grafana -n telemetry 3000
   2. Open Grafana in your browser by using the following URL: http://localhost:3000

4. Go to Dashboards > Agentgateway to open the Agentgateway dashboard that you imported. Verify that you see metrics, such as the proxy overview of CPU and memory usage, request rate by gateway, LLM token consumption, or MCP tool calls.

   

   

   Section	Metric	Description
   Overview	Memory	The working set memory that each agentgateway proxy pod consumes.
   Overview	CPU	The CPU usage rate for each agentgateway proxy pod.
   Requests	Requests (by Pod)	The request rate that each agentgateway proxy pod handles.
   Requests	Requests (by Gateway)	The request rate for each gateway.
   Requests	Requests (by Status)	The request rate grouped by HTTP response status.
   Requests	Requests (by Reason)	The request rate grouped by the response reason.
   LLM	Token Consumption	The rate of tokens that LLM requests consume, grouped by token type, model, and gateway.
   LLM	Time To First Token	The time that it takes the LLM provider to return the first token of a response.
   LLM	Request Time	The total duration of LLM requests.
   LLM	Tokens Per Second	The rate at which the LLM provider returns output tokens.
   MCP	MCP Calls (by method)	The rate of MCP requests grouped by JSON-RPC method.
   MCP	Tool Calls (by tool)	The rate of MCP tool calls grouped by server, resource, and tool.
   Latency	Latency by Route	The 50th, 95th, and 99th percentile request latency for each gateway and route.
   XDS	XDS Messages by Type	The rate of xDS configuration messages that the control plane sends, grouped by resource type.
   XDS	XDS Average Message Size	The average size of xDS messages, grouped by resource type.
   Runtime	Cgroup Memory	The cgroup memory usage for each agentgateway proxy pod, such as working set, anonymous, file, and kernel memory.
   Runtime	Process Memory	The process-level memory for each agentgateway proxy pod, such as RSS, PSS, private, shared, and swap memory.
   Runtime	Tokio Runtime	The async runtime statistics for each agentgateway proxy pod, such as the worker count, number of alive tasks, and global queue depth.
   Runtime	Build Versions	The agentgateway build versions that are running, grouped by tag.

Cleanup

1. Remove the configmap for the agentgateway dashboard and delete the agentgateway.json file.

   kubectl delete cm agentgateway-dashboard -n telemetry
   rm agentgateway.json

2. Uninstall the Grafana Loki and Tempo components.

   helm uninstall loki -n telemetry
   helm uninstall tempo -n telemetry

3. Uninstall the OpenTelemetry collectors.

   helm uninstall opentelemetry-collector-metrics -n telemetry
   helm uninstall opentelemetry-collector-logs -n telemetry
   helm uninstall opentelemetry-collector-traces -n telemetry

4. Uninstall the Prometheus stack.

   helm uninstall kube-prometheus-stack -n telemetry

5. Remove the telemetry namespace.

   kubectl delete namespace telemetry