> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.odigos.io/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Odigos Own Metrics

> Enable Odigos self-telemetry and the bundled VictoriaMetrics store for pipeline visibility in the UI.

## Overview

Odigos collects **own metrics** about its pipeline — collector throughput, export rates, eBPF instrumentation counters, and other internal telemetry. These metrics describe Odigos itself, not your application workloads.

By default, the bundled metrics store is **disabled** (`ownTelemetry.metricsStore.disabled: true`). When you enable it, Odigos deploys a VictoriaMetrics instance (`odigos-victoriametrics`) in the Odigos namespace and routes own metrics there so the UI can query them.

## What enabling the metrics store does

When `ownTelemetry.metricsStore.disabled` is set to `false`:

1. **VictoriaMetrics is deployed** — a single-replica `odigos-victoriametrics` Deployment with 1-day retention stores own metrics inside the cluster.
2. **Collectors report own telemetry** — node collectors and the cluster gateway scrape their OpenTelemetry internal `/metrics` endpoints and forward the data through the gateway to VictoriaMetrics.
3. **Odiglet instrumentation metrics are collected** — node collectors scrape eBPF instrumentation counters from odiglet and forward them through the gateway to the store.
4. **Odigos UI representation** — metrics are display under "collectors pipeline".

Separately from the metrics store, collectors always export traffic-size metrics directly to the UI server over OTLP. That path powers **per-source and per-destination throughput** (`throughputBytes`, `totalDataSent`) in the UI without requiring the metrics store.

## Enabling

The metrics store is disabled by default to keep the Odigos footprint minimal on small clusters.

<Tabs>
  <Tab title="Helm yaml">
    ```yaml theme={null}
    ownTelemetry:
      metricsStore:
        disabled: false
    ```
  </Tab>

  <Tab title="Helm command">
    ```bash theme={null}
    helm upgrade --install odigos odigos/odigos \
      --namespace odigos-system \
      --reuse-values \
      --set ownTelemetry.metricsStore.disabled=false
    ```
  </Tab>
</Tabs>

## Configuration options

### Export to external metrics destinations

You can also send own metrics to your existing metrics backends by enabling **Collect Odigos own metrics** on a metrics destination. When either the metrics store or at least one such destination is enabled, collectors start the own-metrics collection pipeline.

See [Odigos own metrics settings](/api-reference/odigos.io.v1alpha1#odigos-io-v1alpha1-OdigosOwnMetricsSettings) in the API reference for the full `OdigosOwnMetricsSettings` schema.

## Resource footprint

The bundled VictoriaMetrics instance requests roughly:

| Resource | Request | Limit |
| -------- | ------- | ----- |
| CPU      | 100m    | 500m  |
| Memory   | 512Mi   | 2Gi   |

Metrics are retained for **1 day** on ephemeral storage (`emptyDir`).

## Using own metrics for sizing

Own metrics help you understand how much telemetry Odigos is processing before you change [ResourceSizePreset](./configuration#1-using-sizing-configuration) or collector resources.

1. Enable the metrics store.
2. Instrument representative workloads and let traffic run for a few minutes.
3. Check **source throughput** and **destination throughput** in the Odigos UI.
4. Compare total span throughput (bytes/sec) with the [Benchmarks](./benchmarks) preset tables to pick `size_s` through `size_xl`.

## Getting Help

If you have any issues, or require our assistance, please open an issue in [GitHub](https://github.com/odigos-io/odigos), or reach out to us in [Odigos Slack](https://join.slack.com/t/odigos/shared_invite/zt-24u91yknm-0fLXu6qnqYfNHS_GSUgTJw)