Vault usage metrics

Client calculation and sizing can be complex to compute when you have multiple namespaces and auth mounts. The Vault Usage Metrics dashboard on Vault UI provides the information where you can filter the data by namespace and/or auth mounts. You can also use Vault CLI or API to query the usage metrics.

Enable usage metrics

Usage metrics are a feature that is enabled by default for Vault Enterprise and HCP Vault Dedicated. However, if you are running Vault Community Edition, you need to enable usage metrics since it is disabled by default.

Open a web browser to access the Vault UI, and sign in.
Select Client Count from the left navigation menu.
Select Configuration.
Select Edit configuration.
Select the toggle for Usage data collection so that the text reads Data collection is on.
Retention period
The retention period sets the number of months for which Vault will maintain activity logs to track active clients. (Default: 48 months)
Click Save to apply the changes.
Click Continue in the confirmation dialog to enable usage metrics tracking.

$ vault write sys/internal/counters/config enabled=enable

Valid values for enabled parameter are: default, enable, and disable.

Retention period

By default, Vault maintains activity logs to track active clients for 24 months. If you wish to change the retention period, use the retention_months parameter.

Example:

$ vault write sys/internal/counters/config \
    enabled=enable \
    retention_months=12

$ curl --header "X-Vault-Token: <TOKEN>" \
    --request POST \
    --data '{"enabled": "enable"}' \
    $VAULT_ADDR/v1/sys/internal/counters/config

Valid values for enabled parameter are: default, enable, and disable.

Retention period

By default, Vault maintains activity logs to track active clients for 24 months. If you wish to change the retention period, use the retention_months parameter.

Example:

$ curl --header "X-Vault-Token: <TOKEN>" \
    --request POST \
    --data '{"enabled": "enable", "retention_months": 12}' \
    $VAULT_ADDR/v1/sys/internal/counters/config

Usage metrics dashboard

Sign into Vault UI. The Client count section displays the total number of clients for the current billing period.
Select Details.
Examine the Vault Usage Metrics dashboard to learn your Vault usage.

Usage metrics data categories

Running client total are the primary metric on which pricing is based. It is the sum of entity clients (or distinct entities) and non-entity clients.
Entity clients (distinct entities) are representations of a particular user, client, or application that belongs to a defined Vault entity. If you are unfamiliar with Vault entities, refer to the Identity: Entities and Groups tutorial.
Non-entity clients are clients without an entity attached. This is because some customers or workflows might avoid using entity-creating authentication methods and instead depend on token creation through the Vault API. Refer to understanding non-entity tokens to learn more.
Note
The non-entity client count excludes root tokens.
Secrets sync clients are the number of external destinations Vault connects to sync the secrets. Refer to the documentation for more details.
ACME clients are the ACME connections that authenticate under the same certificate identifier (domain) as the same certificate entity for client count calculations. Refer to the documentation for more details.

Select a data range

Under the Client counting period, select Edit to query the data for a different billing period.

Query

Keep in mind that Vault begins collecting data when the feature is enabled. For example, if you enabled the usage metrics in March of 2023, you cannot query data in January of 2023.

Vault will return metrics from March of 2023 through most recent full month.

Filter by namespaces

If you have namespaces, the dashboard displays the top ten namespaces by total clients.

Namespace attribution example

Use the Filters to view the metrics data of a specific namespace.

Filter by namespace

Mount attribution

The clients are also shown as graphs per auth mount. The Mount attribution section displays the top auth mounts where you can expect to find your most used auth method mounts with respect to client usage. This allows you to detect which auth mount had the most number of total clients in the given billing period. You can filter for auth mounts within a namespace, or view auth mounts across namespaces. The mount attribution is available even if you are not using namespaces.

Usage metrics by mount attribution

Query usage metrics via CLI

Retrieve the usage metrics for the current billing period.

$ vault operator usage

Example output:

Period start: 2024-03-01T00:00:00Z
Period end: 2024-10-31T23:59:59Z

Namespace path                                        Entity Clients   Non-Entity clients   Secret syncs   ACME clients   Active clients
--------------                                        --------------   ------------------   ------------   ------------   --------------
[root]                                                86               114                  0              0              200
education/                                            31               31                   0              0              62
education/certification/                              18               25                   0              0              43
education/training/                                   192              197                  0              0              389
finance/                                              18               26                   0              0              44
marketing/                                            28               17                   0              0              45
test-ns-1-with-namespace-length-over-18-characters/   84               75                   0              0              159
test-ns-1/                                            59               66                   0              0              125
test-ns-2-with-namespace-length-over-18-characters/   58               46                   0              0              104
test-ns-2/                                            56               47                   0              0              103

Total                                                 630              644                  0              0              1274

The output shows client usage metrics for each namespace.

Filter by namespace

You can narrow the scope for education namespace and its child namespaces.

$ vault operator usage -namespace education

Period start: 2024-03-01T00:00:00Z
Period end: 2024-10-31T23:59:59Z

Namespace path             Entity Clients   Non-Entity clients   Secret syncs   ACME clients   Active clients
--------------             --------------   ------------------   ------------   ------------   --------------
education/                 31               31                   0              0              62
education/certification/   18               25                   0              0              43
education/training/        192              197                  0              0              389

Total                      241              253                  0              0              494

Query with a time frame

To query the client usage metrics for the month of June, 2024. The start time is June 1, 2024 (2024-06-01T00:00:00Z) and the end time is June 30, 2024 (2024-06-30T23:59:59Z).

The start_time and end_time should be an RFC3339 timestamp or Unix epoch time.

$ vault operator usage \
     -start-time=2024-06-01T00:00:00Z \
     -end-time=2024-06-30T23:59:59Z

Example output:

Period start: 2024-06-01T00:00:00Z
Period end: 2024-06-30T23:59:59Z

Namespace path                                        Entity Clients   Non-Entity clients   Secret syncs   ACME clients   Active clients
--------------                                        --------------   ------------------   ------------   ------------   --------------
[root]                                                10               16                   0              0              26
education/                                            7                1                    0              0              8
education/certification/                              2                4                    0              0              6
education/training/                                   37               30                   0              0              67
finance/                                              3                6                    0              0              9
marketing/                                            2                2                    0              0              4
test-ns-1-with-namespace-length-over-18-characters/   6                9                    0              0              15
test-ns-1/                                            9                12                   0              0              21
test-ns-2-with-namespace-length-over-18-characters/   5                5                    0              0              10
test-ns-2/                                            9                7                    0              0              16

Total                                                 90               92                   0              0              182

Export the metrics data

You can export the metrics data by clicking on the Export attribution data button.

Metrics UI

This downloads the usage metrics data on your local drive in comma separated values format (.csv) or JSON.

API

Refer to the sys/internal/counters page to retrieve client count using API.
Activity export API to export activity log.