Wireguard and Thanos Integration

Input and output integration overview

This plugin collects and reports statistics from the local Wireguard server, providing insights into its interfaces and peers.

This plugin sends metrics from Telegraf to Thanos using the Prometheus remote write protocol over HTTP, allowing efficient and scalable ingestion into Thanos Receive components.

Integration details

Wireguard

The Wireguard plugin collects statistics on the local Wireguard server using the wgctrl library. It reports gauge metrics for Wireguard interface device(s) and its peers. This enables monitoring of various parameters related to Wireguard functionality, enhancing an administrator’s capability to assess the performance and status of their Wireguard setup. The metrics collected can lead to proactive management of the network interfaces, aiding in detecting and resolving issues before they impact service availability.

Thanos

Telegraf’s HTTP plugin can send metrics directly to Thanos via its Remote Write-compatible Receive component. By setting the data format to prometheusremotewrite, Telegraf can serialize metrics into the same protobuf-based format used by native Prometheus clients. This setup enables high-throughput, low-latency metric ingestion into Thanos, facilitating centralized observability at scale. It is particularly useful in hybrid environments where Telegraf is collecting metrics from systems outside Prometheus’ native reach, such as SNMP devices, Windows hosts, or custom apps, and streams them directly to Thanos for long-term storage and global querying.

Configuration

Wireguard

[[inputs.wireguard]]
  ## Optional list of Wireguard device/interface names to query.
  ## If omitted, all Wireguard interfaces are queried.
  # devices = ["wg0"]

Thanos

[[outputs.http]]
  ## Thanos Receive endpoint for remote write
  url = "http://thanos-receive.example.com/api/v1/receive"

  ## HTTP method
  method = "POST"

  ## Data format set to Prometheus remote write
  data_format = "prometheusremotewrite"

  ## Optional headers (authorization, etc.)
  # [outputs.http.headers]
  #   Authorization = "Bearer YOUR_TOKEN"

  ## Optional TLS configuration
  # tls_ca = "/path/to/ca.pem"
  # tls_cert = "/path/to/cert.pem"
  # tls_key = "/path/to/key.pem"
  # insecure_skip_verify = false

  ## Request timeout
  timeout = "10s"

Input and output integration examples

Wireguard

1. Network Performance Monitoring: Monitor the performance metrics of your Wireguard interfaces, allowing you to track bandwidth usage and identify potential bottlenecks in real-time. By integrating these statistics into your existing monitoring system, network administrators can gain insights into the efficiency of their VPN configuration and make data-driven adjustments.

2. Peer Health Checks: Implement health checks for Wireguard peers by monitoring the last handshake time and traffic metrics. If a peer shows a significant drop in RX/TX bytes or hasn’t completed a handshake in a timely manner, alerts can be triggered to address potential connectivity issues proactively.

3. Dynamic Resource Allocation: Use the metrics collected by the Wireguard plugin to dynamically allocate or adjust network resources based on current bandwidth usage and peer activity. For instance, when a peer is heavily utilized, administrators can respond by allocating additional resources or adjusting configurations to optimize performance accordingly.

4. Historical Data Analysis: Aggregate data over time to analyze historical trends in Wireguard device performance. By storing these metrics in a time-series database, teams can visualize long-term trends, assess the impact of configuration changes, and drive strategic decisions regarding network management.

Thanos

1. Agentless Cloud Monitoring: Deploy Telegraf agents across cloud VMs to collect system and application metrics, then stream them directly into Thanos using Remote Write. This provides centralized observability without requiring Prometheus nodes at each location.

2. Scalable Windows Host Monitoring: Use Telegraf on Windows machines to collect OS-level metrics and send them via Remote Write to Thanos Receive. This enables observability across heterogeneous environments with native Prometheus support only on Linux.

3. Cross-Region Metrics Federation: Telegraf agents in multiple geographic regions can push data to region-local Thanos Receivers using this plugin. From there, Thanos can deduplicate and query metrics globally, reducing latency and network egress costs.

4. Integrating Third-Party Data into Thanos: Collect metrics from custom telemetry sources such as REST APIs or proprietary logs using Telegraf inputs and forward them to Thanos via Remote Write. This brings non-native data into a Prometheus-compatible, long-term analytics pipeline.

Feedback

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