The Vector Observability API

Vector ships with a gRPC API that allows you to interact with a running Vector instance. This page covers how to configure and enable Vector's API.

Configuration

{{< config/group group="api" >}}

Endpoints

{{< api/endpoints >}}

How it works

The API exposes a gRPC service defined in proto/vector/observability.proto. You can interact with it using any standard gRPC tooling.

For compatibility with Vector 0.54.0 and earlier, the HTTP GET /health endpoint continues to be served on the same port as the gRPC API, so existing HTTP probes (for example AWS ALB health checks and Kubernetes HTTP liveness/readiness probes) keep working without changes. See the Endpoints section above for details.

Example using grpcurl

# Check health (standard gRPC health check, compatible with Kubernetes gRPC probes)
grpcurl -plaintext localhost:8686 grpc.health.v1.Health/Check

# List components
grpcurl -plaintext localhost:8686 vector.observability.v1.ObservabilityService/GetComponents

# Stream events (tap)
grpcurl -plaintext \
  -d '{"outputs_patterns": ["*"], "limit": 100, "interval_ms": 500}' \
  localhost:8686 vector.observability.v1.ObservabilityService/StreamOutputEvents

Example using curl (HTTP health)

# 200 with body {"ok":true} while serving, 503 {"ok":false} during drain
curl -i http://localhost:8686/health