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 many resources in a VTAP. The metrics help you decide whether a 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.

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

Raw Data Point Frequency

For every 1-minute interval, the Networking service posts one raw data point to the Monitoring service. The Monitoring service charts show data points at 1-minute, 5-minute, 1-hour (60-minute), and 1-day intervals. Supported values for interval depend on the specified time range in the metric query (not applicable to alarm queries). More interval values are supported for smaller time ranges. For example, if you select one hour for the time range, then all interval values are supported. If you select 90 days for the time range, then only interval values between 1 hour and 1 day are supported. The available statistics are calculated by using the count of 1-minute data points in the select interval. For example, for a given metric:

The mean for each 5-minute interval is calculated over five raw data points.
The mean for each 60-minute interval is calculated over 60 raw data points.

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	Metric Display Name	Unit	Description	Dimensions
`VnicFromNetworkMirrorPackets*`	Mirrored packets from Network	packets	Mirrored packets received at the VNIC from the network, after drops.	`VNIC resourceId`
`VnicFromNetworkMirrorBytes`*	Mirrored bytes from Network	bytes	Mirrored bytes received at the VNIC from the network, after drops.
`VnicToNetworkMirrorPackets`*	Mirrored packets to Network	packets	Mirrored packets sent from the VNIC to the network, before drops.
`VnicToNetworkMirrorBytes`*	Mirrored Bytes to Network	bytes	Mirrored bytes sent from the VNIC to the network, before drops.
`VnicIngressMirrorDropsSecurityList`	Ingress Mirrored Packets Dropped by Security List	packets	Mirrored packets received from the network, destined for the VNIC, dropped due to security rule violations.
`VnicIngressMirrorDropsConntrackFull`	Ingress Mirrored Packets Dropped by Full Connection Tracking Table	packets	Mirrored packets received from the network, destined for the VNIC, dropped due to full connection tracking table.
`VnicIngressMirrorDropsThrottle`	Throttled Egress Mirrored Packets	packets	Mirrored packets received from the network, destined for the VNIC, dropped due to throttling.
`VnicEgressMirrorDropsThrottle`	Throttled Egress Mirrored Packets	packets	Mirrored packets sent from the VNIC, destined for the network, dropped due to throttling.

* The Compute service separately reports network-related metrics as measured on the instance itself and aggregated across all the attached VNICs. Those metrics are available in the oci_computeagent metric namespace. For more information, see Compute Instance Metrics.

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

Open the navigation menu and click Observability & Management. Under Monitoring, click Service Metrics.
In Compartment, select the compartment you're interested in.
For Metric Namespace, select oci_vcn or oci_nlb.
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.

Using the API

For information about using the API and signing requests, see REST API documentation and Security Credentials. For information about SDKs, see SDKs and the CLI.

Use the following APIs for monitoring:

Monitoring API for metrics and alarms
Notifications API for notifications (used with alarms)

Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Documentation