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In this lesson, we cover Objective 2: Monitoring a Vault Environment. While this section is concise, understanding Vault telemetry, audit logs, and operational logs is critical for both real-world operations and the Vault Operations Professional exam. Below is an objective overview:
The image is a slide titled "Objective Overview" focusing on monitoring a Vault environment, with three points: understanding Vault telemetry, audit logs, and operational logs. It also features a certification badge and a cartoon character at the bottom.
Sub-objectives:
  • Monitor and understand Vault telemetry
  • Monitor and understand Vault audit logs
  • Monitor and understand Vault operational logs
“Understand” requires conceptual knowledge; “monitor” implies hands-on experience with setup or output analysis.

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Vault Telemetry

Vault telemetry provides runtime metrics on performance, resource usage, and component health. Leveraging telemetry helps you:
  • Detect performance bottlenecks
  • Debug latency spikes
  • Track cluster health over time
The image is a slide explaining telemetry, highlighting its use in collecting runtime metrics for performance monitoring and debugging in a Vault environment. It mentions metrics aggregation every 10 seconds and the use of agents like DataDog or Prometheus for data aggregation.
Key telemetry attributes:
  • Metrics examples: request latency, storage write/read durations, seal/unseal status
  • Aggregation interval: every 10 seconds
  • In-memory retention: 1 minute
  • Collection agents: Datadog Agent, Prometheus node_exporter, etc., polling Vault then forwarding data upstream

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Supported Telemetry Providers

Configure your monitoring backend in the telemetry stanza of config.hcl. Vault supports:
ProviderProtocolCommon Use Case
statsiteCarbonGraphite integrations
statsdStatsDGeneric metrics pipelines
circonusCirconusHigh-scale monitoring
dogstatsdDogStatsDDatadog
prometheusPrometheusPrometheus + Grafana
stackdriverStackdriverGoogle Cloud Monitoring
The image lists providers supported by Vault, including statsite, statsd, circonus, dogstatsd, prometheus, and stackdriver. It also features a Vault certification badge and a cartoon character at the bottom.

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Example Telemetry Metrics

Vault emits dozens of metrics covering HTTP handlers, storage backends, memory usage, and GC pauses:
MetricDescription
vault.core.handleRequestDuration of handled requests (ms)
vault.runtime.totalGCPauseNSGC stop-the-world pause duration (ns)
vault.runtime.memoryUsePercentagePercentage of physical memory in use (%)
vault.runtime.memoryUseTotalBytesTotal physical memory used (bytes)
vault.audit.log.requestTime to write to all audit devices (ms)
vault.policy.getPolicyPolicy retrieval latency (ms)
The image is a table listing various metrics collected by Vault, along with their descriptions, such as request handling duration and memory usage. It also includes a Vault certification badge in the top right corner.
For the full list of metrics, see the official Vault telemetry documentation.

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Configuring Telemetry

Add or update the telemetry block in your Vault HCL config (config.hcl), then restart or reload Vault: 
telemetry {
  dogstatsd_addr = "metrics.hcvop.com:8125"
  dogstatsd_tags = ["vault_env:production"]
}

seal "transit" {
  address  = "transit.hcvop.com:8200"
  key_name = "autounseal"
}
Replace dogstatsd_* with the settings for your chosen backend (Prometheus, statsd, etc.).

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Telemetry Workflow

Vault emits metrics locally → Telemetry agent collects them → Aggregation platform visualizes data:
The image illustrates a telemetry workflow involving a Vault Admin configuring a Vault Server, which sends metrics to an aggregation platform for creating dashboards and alerts.
  1. Vault server with telemetry stanza
  2. Local agent (sidecar or host)
  3. Aggregation platform (Datadog, Splunk, Prometheus + Grafana, etc.)
  4. Dashboards, alerts, and capacity planning

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Sample Dashboard

Below is a Datadog dashboard example showing latency, GC pauses, login rates, and storage metrics:
The image shows a dashboard for monitoring Vault, featuring various performance metrics, logs, and runtime statistics. It includes graphs and data visualizations for system analysis.
Key panels include:
  • Garbage collection pause durations
  • Login request rate and P99 latency
  • Token creation throughput
  • Consul storage operations (put/get/delete)
Be prepared to:
  • Define Vault telemetry
  • Identify common metrics
  • Locate the telemetry stanza in the Vault HCL config
    Practical setup is unlikely, but you may be asked where to add telemetry settings.
Next up, we will explore Vault audit logs.

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