GitLab Prometheus metrics

Note: Available since Omnibus GitLab 9.3. Currently experimental. For installations from source you'll have to configure it yourself.

To enable the GitLab Prometheus metrics:

  1. Log into GitLab as an administrator, and go to the Admin area.
  2. Click on the gear, then click on Settings.
  3. Find the Metrics - Prometheus section, and click Enable Prometheus Metrics
  4. Restart GitLab for the changes to take effect

Collecting the metrics

GitLab monitors its own internal service metrics, and makes them available at the /-/metrics endpoint. Unlike other Prometheus exporters, in order to access it, the client IP needs to be included in a whitelist.

Currently the embedded Prometheus server is not automatically configured to collect metrics from this endpoint. We recommend setting up another Prometheus server, because the embedded server configuration is overwritten once every reconfigure of GitLab. In the future this will not be required.

Unicorn Metrics available

In this experimental phase, only a few metrics are available:

Metric Type Since Description
db_ping_timeout Gauge 9.4 Whether or not the last database ping timed out
db_ping_success Gauge 9.4 Whether or not the last database ping succeeded
db_ping_latency_seconds Gauge 9.4 Round trip time of the database ping
filesystem_access_latency_seconds Gauge 9.4 Latency in accessing a specific filesystem
filesystem_accessible Gauge 9.4 Whether or not a specific filesystem is accessible
filesystem_write_latency_seconds Gauge 9.4 Write latency of a specific filesystem
filesystem_writable Gauge 9.4 Whether or not the filesystem is writable
filesystem_read_latency_seconds Gauge 9.4 Read latency of a specific filesystem
filesystem_readable Gauge 9.4 Whether or not the filesystem is readable
http_requests_total Counter 9.4 Rack request count
http_request_duration_seconds Histogram 9.4 HTTP response time from rack middleware
pipelines_created_total Counter 9.4 Counter of pipelines created
rack_uncaught_errors_total Counter 9.4 Rack connections handling uncaught errors count
redis_ping_timeout Gauge 9.4 Whether or not the last redis ping timed out
redis_ping_success Gauge 9.4 Whether or not the last redis ping succeeded
redis_ping_latency_seconds Gauge 9.4 Round trip time of the redis ping
user_session_logins_total Counter 9.4 Counter of how many users have logged in
filesystem_circuitbreaker_latency_seconds Gauge 9.5 Time spent validating if a storage is accessible
filesystem_circuitbreaker Gauge 9.5 Wether or not the circuit for a certain shard is broken or not
circuitbreaker_storage_check_duration_seconds Histogram 10.3 Time a single storage probe took

Sidekiq Metrics available

Sidekiq jobs may also gather metrics, and these metrics can be accessed if the Sidekiq exporter is enabled (e.g. via the monitoring.sidekiq_exporter configuration option in gitlab.yml.

Metric Type Since Description Labels
geo_db_replication_lag_seconds Gauge 10.2 Database replication lag (seconds) url
geo_repositories Gauge 10.2 Total number of repositories available on primary url
geo_repositories_synced Gauge 10.2 Number of repositories synced on secondary url
geo_repositories_failed Gauge 10.2 Number of repositories failed to sync on secondary url
geo_lfs_objects Gauge 10.2 Total number of LFS objects available on primary url
geo_lfs_objects_synced Gauge 10.2 Number of LFS objects synced on secondary url
geo_lfs_objects_failed Gauge 10.2 Number of LFS objects failed to sync on secondary url
geo_attachments Gauge 10.2 Total number of file attachments available on primary url
geo_attachments_synced Gauge 10.2 Number of attachments synced on secondary url
geo_attachments_failed Gauge 10.2 Number of attachments failed to sync on secondary url
geo_last_event_id Gauge 10.2 Database ID of the latest event log entry on the primary url
geo_last_event_timestamp Gauge 10.2 UNIX timestamp of the latest event log entry on the primary url
geo_cursor_last_event_id Gauge 10.2 Last database ID of the event log processed by the secondary url
geo_cursor_last_event_timestamp Gauge 10.2 Last UNIX timestamp of the event log processed by the secondary url
geo_status_failed_total Counter 10.2 Number of times retrieving the status from the Geo Node failed url
geo_last_successful_status_check_timestamp Gauge Last timestamp when the status was successfully updated url

Metrics shared directory

GitLab's Prometheus client requires a directory to store metrics data shared between multi-process services. Those files are shared among all instances running under Unicorn server. The directory needs to be accessible to all running Unicorn's processes otherwise metrics will not function correctly.

For best performance its advisable that this directory will be located in tmpfs.

Its location is configured using environment variable prometheus_multiproc_dir.

If GitLab is installed using Omnibus and tmpfs is available then metrics directory will be automatically configured.

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