WireGuard monitoring with Netdata

What is WireGuard?

WireGuard is an extremely simple yet fast and modern VPN that utilizes state-of-the-art cryptography.

Monitoring WireGuard with Netdata

The prerequisites for monitoring WireGuard with Netdata are to have WireGuard and Netdata installed on your system.

Netdata auto discovers hundreds of services, and for those it doesn’t turning on manual discovery is a one line configuration. For more information on configuring Netdata for WireGuard monitoring please read the collector documentation.

You should now see the WireGuard section on the Overview tab in Netdata Cloud already populated with charts about all the metrics you care about.

Netdata has a public demo space (no login required) where you can explore different monitoring use-cases and get a feel for Netdata.

What WireGuard metrics are important to monitor - and why?

Device Peers

Device Peers refer to the total number of peers that a device is connected to over the Wireguard VPN tunnel. It is important to monitor this metric as it provides an indication of the overall health of the VPN connection, as if the number of peers decreases it can indicate that the tunnel is not functioning properly. It is also important to monitor this metric to ensure that the system has enough resources allocated to handle the number of peers it is currently connected to.

Device Network IO (receive, transmit)

Device Network IO refers to the amount of data that is being sent and received by the device over the Wireguard VPN tunnel. Monitoring these metrics can help identify potential performance issues that may be occurring. For example, if the amount of data sent is much higher than the amount of data received, this could indicate an issue with the connection or the device itself.

Peer Network IO (receive, transmit)

Peer Network IO refers to the amount of data that is being sent and received between peers over the Wireguard VPN tunnel. It is important to monitor this metric as it can help identify potential performance issues, such as if one peer is not sending or receiving as much data as the other, or if the amount of data sent is much higher than the amount of data received.

Peer Latest Handshake Ago

Peer Latest Handshake Ago refers to the amount of time since the last handshake was established between two peers. A handshake is a process by which the two peers exchange cryptographically signed messages to ensure that both parties are who they say they are. Monitoring this metric can help identify issues with the handshake process, such as if it is taking too long to complete or if it is not completing at all. Normal values for this metric would be a few seconds or less.

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