VTAP Metrics

You can monitor the health, capacity, and performance of your VTAPs by using metrics, alarms, and notifications.

For more information, see Monitoring and Notifications.

This topic describes the metrics emitted by the metric namespaces oci_vcn or oci_nlb.

Resources: VNICs, load balancers

Overview of Metrics

Metrics are available for multiple resources in a VTAP. The metrics help you determine whether your VTAP is mirroring packets or not, how much data is flowing over the VTAP sources and targets, and whether packets are being dropped for unexpected errors.

Currently, VTAP metrics are only supported for Instance VNIC source types, and Network Load Balancer target types.

Required IAM Policy

To monitor resources, you must be given the required type of access in a policy written by an administrator, whether you're using the Console or the REST API with an SDK, CLI, or other tool. The policy must give you access to the monitoring services as well as the resources being monitored. If you try to perform an action and get a message that you don't have permission or are unauthorized, confirm with your administrator the type of access you've been granted and which compartment you should work in. For more information on user authorizations for monitoring, see the Authentication and Authorization section for the related service: Monitoring or Notifications

Available Metrics: oci_vcn

The metrics listed in the following table are automatically available for VTAPs with an instance VNIC source type. You do not need to enable monitoring to get these metrics.

You also can use the Monitoring service to create custom queries. See Building Metric Queries.

Each metric includes the following dimensions:

  • resourceId: The OCID of the source instance VNIC.
Metric Names Display Name Unit Description Dimensions Displayed by default

VnicEgressMirrorDropsThrottle

Throttled Egress Mirrored Packets Packets Mirrored packets sent from the VNIC, destined for the network, dropped due to throttling. resourceId No

VnicToNetworkMirrorBytes

Mirrored Bytes to Network

Bytes Mirrored bytes sent from the VNIC to the network, before drops. resourceId Yes

VnicToNetworkMirrorPackets

Mirrored Packets to Network Packets Mirrored packets sent from the VNIC to the network, before drops. resourceId No

Available Metrics: oci_nlb

The metrics listed in the following table are automatically available for VTAPs with an Network Load Balancer target type. You do not need to enable monitoring to get these metrics.

You also can use the Monitoring service to create custom queries. See Building Metric Queries.

Each metric includes the following dimensions:

  • resourceId: The OCID of the Target NLB.
  • resourceName: The displayName of the Target NLB.
Metric Names Display Name Unit Description Dimensions Displayed by Default

NLBVTAPFwdDrops

Mirrored Packets not Forwarded to NLB Back Ends

Packets

Mirrored packets that are not forwarded to the NLB back ends due to issues such as:

  • No listener setup for the destination port in the overlay packet
  • No healthy backends found at that time
  • Packet dropped by security list

resourceId

resourceName

No

NLBVTAPReceivedBytes

Mirrored Bytes to NLB

Bytes

Number of mirrored bytes sent from VTAP(s) to NLB.

resourceId

resourceName

Yes

NLBVTAPReceivedPackets

Mirrored Packets from VTAPs

Packets

Number of mirrored packets sent from VTAPs to NLB

resourceId

resourceName

No

NLBVTAPTransmittedBytes

Mirrored bytes transmitted to NLB back ends

Bytes

Number of mirrored bytes received from VTAPs transmitted to NLB back ends

resourceId

resourceName

Yes

NLBVTAPTransmittedPackets

Mirrored packets transmitted to NLB back ends

Packets

Number of mirrored packets received from VTAP(s) transmitted to NLB back ends

resourceId

resourceName

No

Using the Console

To view default metric charts for all VCNs or NLBs in a compartment
  1. Open the navigation menu and click Observability & Management. Under Monitoring, click Service Metrics.
  2. In Compartment, select the compartment you're interested in.
  3. For Metric Namespace, select oci_vcn or oci_nlb.
  4. The Service Metrics page dynamically updates the page to show charts for each metric emitted by the selected metric namespace.

By default, the charts show a separate line for each resource in the compartment.