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.
The plugin supports the following configuration parameters:
Kubernetes Filter aims to provide several ways to process the data contained in the log key. The following explanation of the workflow assumes that your original Docker parser defined in parsers.conf is as follows:
Since Fluent Bit v1.2 we are not suggesting the use of decoders (Decode_Field_As) if you are using Elasticsearch database in the output to avoid data type conflicts.
To perform processing of the log key, it's mandatory to enable the Merge_Log configuration property in this filter, then the following processing order will be done:
If a Pod suggest a parser, the filter will use that parser to process the content of log.
If the option Merge_Parser was set and the Pod did not suggest a parser, process the log content using the suggested parser in the configuration.
If no Pod was suggested and no Merge_Parser is set, try to handle the content as JSON.
If log value processing fails, the value is untouched. The order above is not chained, meaning it's exclusive and the filter will try only one of the options above, not all of them.
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:
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:
There are certain situations where the user would like to request that the log processor simply skip the logs from the Pod in question:
Note that the annotation value is boolean which can take a true or false and must be quoted.
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):
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:
then the Tag for every record of that file becomes:
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 you have large pod specifications (can be caused by large numbers of environment variables, etc.), be sure to increase the
Buffer_Sizeparameter of the kubernetes filter. If object sizes exceed this buffer, some metadata will fail to be injected to the logs.
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:
to:
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:
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:
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).
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.
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. A value of 0 results in no limit, and the buffer will expand as-needed. Note that if pod specifications exceed the buffer limit, the API response will be discarded when retrieving metadata, and some kubernetes metadata will fail to be injected to the logs.
32k
Kube_URL
API Server end-point
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
Merge_Parser
Optional parser name to specify how to parse the data contained in the log key. Recommended use is for developers or testing only.
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
DNS_Retries
DNS lookup retries N times until the network start working
6
DNS_Wait_Time
DNS lookup interval between network status checks
30
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[_stream][-container]
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