Service Ping development guidelines
Service Ping is a GitLab process that collects and sends a weekly payload to GitLab. The payload provides important high-level data that helps our product, support, and sales teams understand how GitLab is used. The data helps to:
- Compare counts month over month (or week over week) to get a rough sense for how an instance uses different product features.
- Collect other facts that help us classify and understand GitLab installations.
- Calculate our stage monthly active users (SMAU), which helps to measure the success of our stages and features.
Service Ping information is not anonymous. It’s linked to the instance’s hostname, but does not contain project names, usernames, or any other specific data.
Service Ping is enabled by default. However, you can disable certain metrics on any GitLab Self-Managed instance. When Service Ping is enabled, GitLab gathers data from the other instances and can show your instance’s usage statistics to your users.
Service Ping terminology
We use the following terminology to describe the Service Ping components:
- Service Ping: the process that collects and generates a JSON payload.
- Service Data: the contents of the Service Ping JSON payload. This includes metrics.
- Metrics: primarily made up of row counts for different tables in an instance’s database. Each metric has a corresponding metric definition in a YAML file.
- MAU: monthly active users.
- WAU: weekly active users.
Known issues
- Service Ping delivers only metrics, not individual events.
- A metric has to be present and instrumented in the codebase for a GitLab version to be delivered in Service Pings for that version.
Service Ping request flow
The following example shows a basic request/response flow between a GitLab instance, the Versions Application, the License Application, Salesforce, the GitLab GCP Bucket, the GitLab Snowflake Data Warehouse, and Tableau:
sequenceDiagram participant GitLab Instance participant Versions Application participant Licenses Application participant Salesforce participant GCP Bucket participant Snowflake DW participant Tableau Dashboards GitLab Instance->>Versions Application: Send Service Ping loop Process usage data Versions Application->>Versions Application: Parse usage data Versions Application->>Versions Application: Write to database Versions Application->>Versions Application: Update license ping time end loop Process data for Salesforce Versions Application-xLicenses Application: Request Zuora subscription id Licenses Application-xVersions Application: Zuora subscription id Versions Application-xSalesforce: Request Zuora account id by Zuora subscription id Salesforce-xVersions Application: Zuora account id Versions Application-xSalesforce: Usage data for the Zuora account end Versions Application->>GCP Bucket: Export Versions database GCP Bucket->>Snowflake DW: Import data Snowflake DW->>Snowflake DW: Transform data using dbt Snowflake DW->>Tableau Dashboards: Data available for querying Versions Application->>GitLab Instance: DevOps Score (Conversational Development Index)
How Service Ping works
The Service Ping cron job is set in Sidekiq to run weekly.
When the cron job runs, it calls
Gitlab::Usage::ServicePingReport.for(output: :all_metrics_values)
.Gitlab::Usage::ServicePingReport.for(output: :all_metrics_values)
cascades down to ~400+ other counter method calls.The response of all methods calls are merged together into a single JSON payload.
The JSON payload is then posted to the Versions application If a firewall exception is needed, the required URL depends on several things. If the hostname is
version.gitlab.com
, the protocol isTCP
, and the port number is443
, the required URL is https://version.gitlab.com/.In case of an error, it will be reported to the Version application along with following pieces of information:
uuid
- GitLab instance unique identifierhostname
- GitLab instance hostnameversion
- GitLab instance current versionselapsed
- Amount of time which passed since Service Ping report process started and moment of error occurrencemessage
- Error message
{ "uuid"=>"02333324-1cd7-4c3b-a45b-a4993f05fb1d", "hostname"=>"127.0.0.1", "version"=>"14.7.0-pre", "elapsed"=>0.006946, "message"=>'PG::UndefinedColumn: ERROR: column \"non_existent_attribute\" does not exist\nLINE 1: SELECT COUNT(non_existent_attribute) FROM \"issues\" /*applica...' }
Finally, the timing metadata information that is used for diagnostic purposes is submitted to the Versions application. It consists of a list of metric identifiers and the time it took to calculate the metrics:
- Introduced in GitLab 15.0 with a flag, enabled by default.
- Generally available in GitLab 15.2. Feature flag
measure_service_ping_metric_collection
removed.
{
"metadata"=>
{
"uuid"=>"0000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000",
"metrics"=>
[{"name"=>"version", "time_elapsed"=>1.1811964213848114e-05},
{"name"=>"installation_type", "time_elapsed"=>0.00017242692410945892},
{"name"=>"license_billable_users", "time_elapsed"=>0.009520471096038818},
....
{"name"=>"counts.clusters_platforms_eks",
"time_elapsed"=>0.05638605775311589},
{"name"=>"counts.clusters_platforms_gke",
"time_elapsed"=>0.40995341585949063},
{"name"=>"counts.clusters_platforms_user",
"time_elapsed"=>0.06410990096628666},
{"name"=>"counts.clusters_management_project",
"time_elapsed"=>0.24020783510059118}
]
}
}
On a Geo secondary site
We also collect metrics specific to Geo secondary sites to send with Service Ping.
The Geo secondary service ping cron job is set in Sidekiq to run weekly.
When the cron job runs, it calls
SecondaryUsageData.update_metrics!
. This collects the relevant metrics from Prometheus and stores the data in the Geo secondary tracking database for transmission to the primary site during a Geo node status update.Geo node status data is sent with the JSON payload in the process described above. The following is an example of the payload where each object in the array represents a Geo node:
[ { "git_fetch_event_count_weekly"=>nil, "git_push_event_count_weekly"=>nil, ... other geo node status fields } ]
Example Service Ping payload
The following is example content of the Service Ping payload.
{
"uuid": "0000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000",
"hostname": "example.com",
"version": "12.10.0-pre",
"installation_type": "omnibus-gitlab",
"active_user_count": 999,
"recorded_at": "2020-04-17T07:43:54.162+00:00",
"edition": "EEU",
"license_md5": "00000000000000000000000000000000",
"license_sha256": "0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000",
"license_id": null,
"historical_max_users": 999,
"licensee": {
"Name": "ABC, Inc.",
"Email": "email@example.com",
"Company": "ABC, Inc."
},
"license_user_count": 999,
"license_starts_at": "2020-01-01",
"license_expires_at": "2021-01-01",
"license_plan": "ultimate",
"license_add_ons": {
},
"license_trial": false,
"counts": {
"assignee_lists": 999,
"boards": 999,
"ci_builds": 999,
...
},
"container_registry_enabled": true,
"dependency_proxy_enabled": false,
"gitlab_shared_runners_enabled": true,
"gravatar_enabled": true,
"influxdb_metrics_enabled": true,
"ldap_enabled": false,
"mattermost_enabled": false,
"omniauth_enabled": true,
"prometheus_enabled": false,
"prometheus_metrics_enabled": false,
"reply_by_email_enabled": "incoming+%{key}@incoming.gitlab.com",
"signup_enabled": true,
"projects_with_expiration_policy_disabled": 999,
"projects_with_expiration_policy_enabled": 999,
...
"elasticsearch_enabled": true,
"license_trial_ends_on": null,
"geo_enabled": false,
"git": {
"version": {
"major": 2,
"minor": 26,
"patch": 1
}
},
"gitaly": {
"version": "12.10.0-rc1-93-g40980d40",
"servers": 56,
"clusters": 14,
"filesystems": [
"EXT_2_3_4"
]
},
"gitlab_pages": {
"enabled": true,
"version": "1.17.0"
},
"container_registry_server": {
"vendor": "gitlab",
"version": "2.9.1-gitlab",
"db_enabled": false
},
"database": {
"adapter": "postgresql",
"version": "9.6.15",
"pg_system_id": 6842684531675334351,
"flavor": "Cloud SQL for PostgreSQL"
},
"analytics_unique_visits": {
"g_analytics_contribution": 999,
...
},
"usage_activity_by_stage": {
"configure": {
"project_clusters_enabled": 999,
...
},
"create": {
"merge_requests": 999,
...
},
"manage": {
"events": 999,
...
},
"monitor": {
"clusters": 999,
...
},
"package": {
"projects_with_packages": 999
},
"plan": {
"issues": 999,
...
},
"release": {
"deployments": 999,
...
},
"secure": {
"user_container_scanning_jobs": 999,
...
},
"verify": {
"ci_builds": 999,
...
}
},
"usage_activity_by_stage_monthly": {
"configure": {
"project_clusters_enabled": 999,
...
},
"create": {
"merge_requests": 999,
...
},
"manage": {
"events": 999,
...
},
"monitor": {
"clusters": 999,
...
},
"package": {
"projects_with_packages": 999
},
"plan": {
"issues": 999,
...
},
"release": {
"deployments": 999,
...
},
"secure": {
"user_container_scanning_jobs": 999,
...
},
"verify": {
"ci_builds": 999,
...
}
},
"topology": {
"duration_s": 0.013836685999194742,
"application_requests_per_hour": 4224,
"query_apdex_weekly_average": 0.996,
"failures": [],
"nodes": [
{
"node_memory_total_bytes": 33269903360,
"node_memory_utilization": 0.35,
"node_cpus": 16,
"node_cpu_utilization": 0.2,
"node_uname_info": {
"machine": "x86_64",
"sysname": "Linux",
"release": "4.19.76-linuxkit"
},
"node_services": [
{
"name": "web",
"process_count": 16,
"process_memory_pss": 233349888,
"process_memory_rss": 788220927,
"process_memory_uss": 195295487,
"server": "puma"
},
{
"name": "sidekiq",
"process_count": 1,
"process_memory_pss": 734080000,
"process_memory_rss": 750051328,
"process_memory_uss": 731533312
},
...
],
...
},
...
]
}
}
Export Service Ping data
Rake tasks exist to export Service Ping data in different formats.
- The Rake tasks export the raw SQL queries for
count
,distinct_count
,sum
. - The Rake tasks export the Redis counter class or the line of the Redis block for
redis_usage_data
. - The Rake tasks calculate the
alt_usage_data
metrics.
In the home directory of your local GitLab installation run the following Rake tasks for either the YAML or the JSON versions:
# for YAML export of SQL queries
bin/rake gitlab:usage_data:dump_sql_in_yaml
# for JSON export of SQL queries
bin/rake gitlab:usage_data:dump_sql_in_json
# for JSON export of Non SQL data
bin/rake gitlab:usage_data:dump_non_sql_in_json
# You may pipe the output into a file
bin/rake gitlab:usage_data:dump_sql_in_yaml > ~/Desktop/usage-metrics-2020-09-02.yaml
Fallback values for Service Ping
We return fallback values in these cases:
Case | Value |
---|---|
Deprecated Metric (Removed with version 14.3) | -1000 |
Timeouts, general failures | -1 |
Standard errors in counters | -2 |
Histogram metrics failure | { ‘-1’ => -1 } |
Monitoring
Service Ping reporting process state is monitored with Tableau dashboard.
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