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Kubernetes

Fluent Bit Kubernetes Filter allows to enrich your log files with Kubernetes metadata.

When Fluent Bit is deployed in Kubernetes as a DaemonSet and configured to read the log files from the containers (using tail or systemd input plugins), this filter aims to perform the following operations:

  • Analyze the Tag and extract the following metadata:

    • Pod Name

    • Namespace

    • Container Name

    • Container ID

  • Query Kubernetes API Server to obtain extra metadata for the POD in question:

    • Pod ID

    • Labels

    • Annotations

The data is cached locally in memory and appended to each record.

Configuration Parameters

The plugin supports the following configuration parameters:

Key

Description

Default

Buffer_Size

Set the buffer size for HTTP client when reading responses from Kubernetes API server. The value must be according to the Unit Size specification.

32k

Kube_URL

API Server end-point

https://kubernetes.default.svc:443

Kube_CA_File

CA certificate file

/var/run/secrets/kubernetes.io/serviceaccount/ca.crt

Kube_CA_Path

Absolute path to scan for certificate files

Kube_Token_File

Token file

/var/run/secrets/kubernetes.io/serviceaccount/token

Kube_Tag_Prefix

When the source records comes from Tail input plugin, this option allows to specify what's the prefix used in Tail configuration.

kube.var.log.containers.

Merge_Log

When enabled, it checks if the log field content is a JSON string map, if so, it append the map fields as part of the log structure.

Off

Merge_Log_Key

When Merge_Log is enabled, the filter tries to assume the log field from the incoming message is a JSON string message and make a structured representation of it at the same level of the log field in the map. Now if Merge_Log_Key is set (a string name), all the new structured fields taken from the original log content are inserted under the new key.

Merge_Log_Trim

When Merge_Log is enabled, trim (remove possible \n or \r) field values.

On

Keep_Log

When Keep_Log is disabled, the log field is removed from the incoming message once it has been successfully merged (Merge_Log must be enabled as well).

On

tls.debug

Debug level between 0 (nothing) and 4 (every detail).

-1

tls.verify

When enabled, turns on certificate validation when connecting to the Kubernetes API server.

On

Use_Journal

When enabled, the filter reads logs coming in Journald format.

Off

Regex_Parser

Set an alternative Parser to process record Tag and extract pod_name, namespace_name, container_name and docker_id. The parser must be registered in a parsers file (refer to parser filter-kube-test as an example).

K8S-Logging.Parser

Allow Kubernetes Pods to suggest a pre-defined Parser (read more about it in Kubernetes Annotations section)

Off

K8S-Logging.Exclude

Allow Kubernetes Pods to exclude their logs from the log processor (read more about it in Kubernetes Annotations section).

Off

Labels

Include Kubernetes resource labels in the extra metadata.

On

Annotations

Include Kubernetes resource annotations in the extra metadata.

On

Kube_meta_preload_cache_dir

If set, Kubernetes meta-data can be cached/pre-loaded from files in JSON format in this directory, named as namespace-pod.meta

Dummy_Meta

If set, use dummy-meta data (for test/dev purposes)

Off

Kubernetes Annotations

A flexible feature of Fluent Bit Kubernetes filter is that allow Kubernetes Pods to suggest certain behaviors for the log processor pipeline when processing the records. At the moment it support:

  • Suggest a pre-defined parser

  • Request to exclude logs

The following annotations are available:

Annotation

Description

Default

fluentbit.io/parser[_stream][-container]

Suggest a pre-defined parser. The parser must be registered already by Fluent Bit. This option will only be processed if Fluent Bit configuration (Kubernetes Filter) have enabled the option K8S-Logging.Parser. If present, the stream (stdout or stderr) will restrict that specific stream. If present, the container can override a specific container in a Pod.

fluentbit.io/exclude

Request to Fluent Bit to exclude or not the logs generated by the Pod. This option will only be processed if Fluent Bit configuration (Kubernetes Filter) have enabled the option K8S-Logging.Exclude.

False

Annotation Examples in Pod definition

Suggest a parser

The following Pod definition runs a Pod that emits Apache logs to the standard output, in the Annotations it suggest that the data should be processed using the pre-defined parser called apache:

apiVersion: v1
kind: Pod
metadata:
  name: apache-logs
  labels:
    app: apache-logs
  annotations:
    fluentbit.io/parser: apache
spec:
  containers:
  - name: apache
    image: edsiper/apache_logs

Request to exclude logs

There are certain situations where the user would like to request that the log processor simply skip the logs from the Pod in question:

apiVersion: v1
kind: Pod
metadata:
  name: apache-logs
  labels:
    app: apache-logs
  annotations:
    fluentbit.io/exclude: "true"
spec:
  containers:
  - name: apache
    image: edsiper/apache_logs

Note that the annotation value is boolean which can take a true or false and must be quoted.

Workflow of Tail + Kubernetes Filter

Kubernetes Filter depends on either Tail or Systemd input plugins to process and enrich records with Kubernetes metadata. Here we will explain the workflow of Tail and how it configuration is correlated with Kubernetes filter. Consider the following configuration example (just for demo purposes, not production):

[INPUT]
    Name    tail
    Tag     kube.*
    Path    /var/log/containers/*.log
    Parser  docker

[FILTER]
    Name             kubernetes
    Match            kube.*
    Kube_URL         https://kubernetes.default.svc:443
    Kube_CA_File     /var/run/secrets/kubernetes.io/serviceaccount/ca.crt
    Kube_Token_File  /var/run/secrets/kubernetes.io/serviceaccount/token
    Kube_Tag_Prefix  kube.

In the input section, the Tail plugin will monitor all files ending in .log in path /var/log/containers/. For every file it will read every line and apply the docker parser. Then the records are emitted to the next step with an expanded tag.

Tail support Tags expansion, which means that if a tag have a star character (*), it will replace the value with the absolute path of the monitored file, so if you file name and path is:

/var/log/container/apache-logs-annotated_default_apache-aeeccc7a9f00f6e4e066aeff0434cf80621215071f1b20a51e8340aa7c35eac6.log

then the Tag for every record of that file becomes:

kube.var.log.containers.apache-logs-annotated_default_apache-aeeccc7a9f00f6e4e066aeff0434cf80621215071f1b20a51e8340aa7c35eac6.log

note that slashes are replaced with dots.

When Kubernetes Filter runs, it will try to match all records that starts with kube. (note the ending dot), so records from the file mentioned above will hit the matching rule and the filter will try to enrich the records

Kubernetes Filter do not care from where the logs comes from, but it cares about the absolute name of the monitored file, because that information contains the pod name and namespace name that are used to retrieve associated metadata to the running Pod from the Kubernetes Master/API Server.

If the configuration property Kube_Tag_Prefix was configured (available on Fluent Bit >= 1.1.x), it will use that value to remove the prefix that was appended to the Tag in the previous Input section. Note that the configuration property defaults to _kube._var.logs.containers. , so the previous Tag content will be transformed from:

kube.var.log.containers.apache-logs-annotated_default_apache-aeeccc7a9f00f6e4e066aeff0434cf80621215071f1b20a51e8340aa7c35eac6.log

to:

apache-logs-annotated_default_apache-aeeccc7a9f00f6e4e066aeff0434cf80621215071f1b20a51e8340aa7c35eac6.log

the transformation above do not modify the original Tag, just creates a new representation for the filter to perform metadata lookup.

that new value is used by the filter to lookup the pod name and namespace, for that purpose it uses an internal Regular expression:

(?<pod_name>[a-z0-9](?:[-a-z0-9]*[a-z0-9])?(?:\.[a-z0-9]([-a-z0-9]*[a-z0-9])?)*)_(?<namespace_name>[^_]+)_(?<container_name>.+)-(?<docker_id>[a-z0-9]{64})\.log$

If you want to know more details, check the source code of that definition here.

You can see on Rublar.com web site how this operation is performed, check the following demo link:

Custom Regex

Under certain and not common conditions, a user would want to alter that hard-coded regular expression, for that purpose the option Regex_Parser can be used (documented on top).

Final Comments

So at this point the filter is able to gather the values of pod_name and namespace, with that information it will check in the local cache (internal hash table) if some metadata for that key pair exists, if so, it will enrich the record with the metadata value, otherwise it will connect to the Kubernetes Master/API Server and retrieve that information.

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