Telemetry
Set your vCluster telemetry preferences.
Why Loft Labs collects telemetry
Because vCluster is a freely available open source project, Loft Labs has a very limited idea of how the project is being used, and very limited possibilities to gather this information from the users. Without reliable information, it is difficult to make decisions about the prioritization of features, test automation or bug fixes. Deprecation of the flags and features turns into guesswork, and removal becomes nearly impossible. To get to the next step in maturing the project, and ensure long-term maintainability, we will be making decisions about feature deprecation, prioritizing test coverage, etc., and we want these decisions to be data-driven.
What Loft Labs collects
Loft Labs is not interested in collecting data about individuals that are using vCluster. Rather, Loft Labs collects data about how vCluster is being used. This entails information about the configuration of vCluster, and the environment where it is deployed (e.g. Kubernetes version, CPU architecture, etc.).
Each vCluster is deployed with a syncer component, which contains all controllers that make a virtual cluster function. This component collects the data and uploads it to Loft Labs at regular intervals (once every 1-5 minutes). Loft Labs provides a documented example of the telemetry payload. The source code responsible for this is fully available in the vCluster repo. The telemetry backend is hosted at "https://admin.loft.sh/analytics/v1/vcluster/". The ingestion service is written and maintained by the vCluster maintainers. The data is saved into a relational database with strict access control.
Telemetry payload example
This is an example of the payload that the vCluster syncer component would send to the telemetry backend. Some fields are self-explanatory, and some are explained after the example.
{
"instanceProperties":{
"uid":"7629e852-34d9-4fa6-8fc7-4c0423b5c44b",
"instanceCreator":"vclusterctl",
"instanceCreatorUID":"2c98c17cb7b02912d68eed65398d136ea4ff42e77d14f48a4d383420f8eada44",
"arch":"amd64",
"os":"linux",
"syncerVersion":"v0.15.0",
"syncerFlags":"{setFlags:{\"node-selector\":true},controllers:[\"hoststorageclasses\"]}",
"vclusterServiceType":"NodePort",
"virtualKubernetesVersion":{
"major":"1",
"minor":"26",
"gitVersion":"v1.26.0+k3s1"
},
"hostKubernetesVersion":{
"major":"1",
"minor":"25",
"gitVersion":"v1.25.3"
}
},
"events":[
{
"type":"SyncerStarted",
"time":1681418584841756
},
{
"type":"LeadershipStarted",
"time":1681418585169754
},
{
"type":"ResourceSync",
"time":1681418812947320,
"success":true,
"group":"core",
"version":"v1",
"kind":"ConfigMap"
},
{
"type":"ResourceSync",
"time":1681418812968426,
"success":true,
"processingTime":21,
"group":"core",
"version":"v1",
"kind":"Pod"
}
],
"token":"eyJhbGciOiJSUzI1NiIsImtpZCI6IjRnektQWDRLLTdNZXlYWVFRVjdKM1BVUnhHRTdOVW1UazIyeGphcVRmdlUifQ.eyJpc3MiOiJ2Y2x1c3Rlci10ZWxlbWV0cnkifQ.WEh-8EfCpB1mW24s-jLW1vkcgLzTo6UArxgL03A650BnHv5aUY-C-BcR_sdOoMJIGZifdTImYwWIZYBPD232odlOiVijKGH3CMRPH9gblzUeRkBO1Qdl_qq7pIjEIWiQ4y6-H02u3nFtXBWmdq77rF32pxtzonvknFPKCvdoICP773wiJk_Tvofno0GnMxWLuojqahZdTjo15ww4kB5BnZZoT7UrhyPRFYD6fAL1YJq8WLi0GSKN2hoeC5EpcvLzmCfV3qUd_3PmHTIvvUJdTvjDfTUjI7aQfn1XsPz_GfRCsv18LNmTd2PqYbOaIZP7GeJ5l63pNp0IDKNgjtnjdl6bPgtoV21cZjZ4iVd2ODjUiTBUtFTT8QxXPA6_fuX1ZCpnAEppfELopkrFKD0F9RQFZW8BVWiaKLiULy3AgfaOUYOTlt0-j52JXW7gbNXhdIgWvt5r99a7DUAd8yo76SJBxMA3WQfSs43SeppM_iegVAa13ZUSKsiyNWUZ84SXtT1nlma93JZPchtdNKpgQIWiKC9MrNf3DiibBLHln3DE21XMVzn7CEuFiNLy4zl088Kg3Ue3KJiJBvWWFBN1kf-5xq1BN9lfVzwbaRW_mF2zcKz5sXe8J5wbiFzWOuCTWu24XPUUVj4aW_SkTeag80iMqFtrSAt63diQ6s9gm9g"
}
instanceProperties.uid- is a unique identifier of a particular instance. It is used to deduplicate data sent over time. The.metadata.uidvalue of the vCluster PVC or Service resource is used as value.instanceProperties.instanceCreatorUID- is a machine identifier attached by the vCluster CLI to an instance during creation. We use machineid library to get the identifier, and then hash it for privacy.instanceProperties.syncerFlags- contains a JSON payload that can have two fields:setFlags- list of the non-default syncer flags that were set, but the values are not collected, we only settrueas value for each key;controllers- list of the resource sync controllers that have been enabled in addition to the default one.events- an array of events for which we want to track duration and outcome (success/failure). We are sending just the GVK of the resource, but never any content.token- this is a token generated in memory from a static key that is part of the vCluster binary. It is used to validate that the payload is being received from a real vCluster binary.
The CLI may also send telemetry data. For example:
{
"data": [
{
"event": {
"machine_id": "randomID",
"platform_instance_id": "randomID",
"platform_user_id": "randomID",
"properties": "{\"command\":[\"vcluster\",\"completion\",\"bash\"],\"version\":\"0.18.1\"}",
"timestamp": 17071593829,
"type": "vcluster_cli"
},
"user": {
"machine_id": "randomID",
"platform_instance_id": "randomID",
"platform_user_id": "randomID",
"properties": "{\"os_arch\":\"arm64\",\"os_name\":\"darwin\",\"timezone\":\"GMT\"}",
"timestamp": 17071593829
}
}
]
}
Config reference
telemetry required object pro
Configuration related to telemetry gathered about vCluster usage.
telemetry required object pro