Understanding Network Observability Operator - Network Observability | Observability

Network Observability is an OpenShift operator that deploys a monitoring pipeline to collect and enrich network traffic flows that are produced by the Network Observability eBPF agent.

Viewing statuses

The Network Observability Operator provides the Flow Collector API. When a Flow Collector resource is created, it deploys pods and services to create and store network flows in the Loki log store, as well as to display dashboards, metrics, and flows in the OKD web console.

Procedure

Run the following command to view the state of FlowCollector:

$ oc get flowcollector/cluster

Example output

NAME      AGENT   SAMPLING (EBPF)   DEPLOYMENT MODEL   STATUS
cluster   EBPF    50                DIRECT             Ready

Check the status of pods running in the netobserv namespace by entering the following command:

$ oc get pods -n netobserv

Example output

NAME                              READY   STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE
flowlogs-pipeline-56hbp           1/1     Running   0          147m
flowlogs-pipeline-9plvv           1/1     Running   0          147m
flowlogs-pipeline-h5gkb           1/1     Running   0          147m
flowlogs-pipeline-hh6kf           1/1     Running   0          147m
flowlogs-pipeline-w7vv5           1/1     Running   0          147m
netobserv-plugin-cdd7dc6c-j8ggp   1/1     Running   0          147m

The flowlogs-pipeline pods collect flows, enriches the collected flows, then send flows to the Loki storage. netobserv-plugin pods create a visualization plugin for the OKD Console.

Check the status of pods running in the namespace netobserv-privileged by entering the following command:

$ oc get pods -n netobserv-privileged

Example output

NAME                         READY   STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE
netobserv-ebpf-agent-4lpp6   1/1     Running   0          151m
netobserv-ebpf-agent-6gbrk   1/1     Running   0          151m
netobserv-ebpf-agent-klpl9   1/1     Running   0          151m
netobserv-ebpf-agent-vrcnf   1/1     Running   0          151m
netobserv-ebpf-agent-xf5jh   1/1     Running   0          151m

The netobserv-ebpf-agent pods monitor network interfaces of the nodes to get flows and send them to flowlogs-pipeline pods.

If you are using the Loki Operator, check the status of the component pods of LokiStack custom resource in the netobserv namespace by entering the following command:

$ oc get pods -n netobserv

Example output

NAME                                                READY   STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE
lokistack-compactor-0                               1/1     Running   0          18h
lokistack-distributor-654f87c5bc-qhkhv              1/1     Running   0          18h
lokistack-distributor-654f87c5bc-skxgm              1/1     Running   0          18h
lokistack-gateway-796dc6ff7-c54gz                   2/2     Running   0          18h
lokistack-index-gateway-0                           1/1     Running   0          18h
lokistack-index-gateway-1                           1/1     Running   0          18h
lokistack-ingester-0                                1/1     Running   0          18h
lokistack-ingester-1                                1/1     Running   0          18h
lokistack-ingester-2                                1/1     Running   0          18h
lokistack-querier-66747dc666-6vh5x                  1/1     Running   0          18h
lokistack-querier-66747dc666-cjr45                  1/1     Running   0          18h
lokistack-querier-66747dc666-xh8rq                  1/1     Running   0          18h
lokistack-query-frontend-85c6db4fbd-b2xfb           1/1     Running   0          18h
lokistack-query-frontend-85c6db4fbd-jm94f           1/1     Running   0          18h

Network Observablity Operator architecture

The Network Observability Operator provides the FlowCollector API, which is instantiated at installation and configured to reconcile the eBPF agent, the flowlogs-pipeline, and the netobserv-plugin components. Only a single FlowCollector per cluster is supported.

The eBPF agent runs on each cluster node with some privileges to collect network flows. The flowlogs-pipeline receives the network flows data and enriches the data with Kubernetes identifiers. If you choose to use Loki, the flowlogs-pipeline sends flow logs data to Loki for storing and indexing. The netobserv-plugin, which is a dynamic OKD web console plugin, queries Loki to fetch network flows data. Cluster-admins can view the data in the web console.

If you do not use Loki, you can generate metrics with Prometheus. Those metrics and their related dashboards are accessible in the web console. For more information, see "Network Observability without Loki".

Network Observability eBPF export architecture

If you are using the Kafka option, the eBPF agent sends the network flow data to Kafka, and the flowlogs-pipeline reads from the Kafka topic before sending to Loki, as shown in the following diagram.

Additional resources

Network Observability without Loki

Viewing Network Observability Operator status and configuration

You can inspect the status and view the details of the FlowCollector using the oc describe command.

Procedure

Run the following command to view the status and configuration of the Network Observability Operator:
```
$ oc describe flowcollector/cluster
```

Network Observability Operator in OKD

Viewing statuses

Network Observablity Operator architecture

Viewing Network Observability Operator status and configuration