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Logs and Metrics

Logs about Core WAAP's http request / response processing and possible security policy violation events are crucial for the visibility of the target web application or API operation. Core WAAP Operator logs allow to monitor configuration change events. Besides logs, metrics offer quantitative data on aspects like traffic volume, response times, and blocked threats, enabling the monitoring of Core WAAP effectiveness over time and identifying trends or anomalies.

All Core WAAP components log to standard error in either JSON format for text format. To process logs via a dedicated log stack for further processing and visualization, it is recommended to use the JSON format. Metrics are exposed in Prometheus format via a dedicated Kubernetes service which is named after Core WAAP CRD with metrics- prefix. The port of this service can be configured in spec.operation.metrics section of the CRD (see API Description for it). The URL is /metrics.

How the log and monitoring stack can look like is beyond the scope of this documentation.

Core WAAP filter metrics

The following metrics are exposed to help you monitor and observe the behavior of several filters. Each metric captures a specific aspect of traffic processing giving you full visibility into both allowed and blocked transactions across all policy layers.

Metric Description
header_filter_tx_total Total number of requests processed by the header filter.
header_filter_request_headers_removed_total Total number of request headers removed by the header filter.
header_filter_response_headers_removed_total Total number of response headers removed by the header filter.
icap_tx_allowed Total number of requests allowed after ICAP inspection.
icap_tx_blocked Total number of requests blocked by ICAP inspection.
icap_tx_processing_errors Total number of errors encountered during ICAP processing.
icap_tx_total Total number of requests submitted for ICAP inspection.
dos_tx_total Total number of requests evaluated by the DoS protection policy.
dos_blocked_tx_total Total number of requests blocked by the DoS protection policy.
openapi_tx_allowed Total number of requests allowed after OpenAPI schema validation.
openapi_tx_blocked Total number of requests blocked by OpenAPI schema validation.
openapi_responses_tx_allowed Total number of responses allowed after OpenAPI schema validation.
openapi_responses_tx_blocked Total number of responses blocked by OpenAPI schema validation.
openapi_tx_total Total number of requests evaluated against the OpenAPI schema.