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About remote health monitoring

OpenShift Container Platform collects telemetry and configuration data about your cluster and reports it to Red Hat by using the Telemeter Client and the Insights Operator. The data that is provided to Red Hat enables the benefits outlined in this document.

A cluster that reports data to Red Hat through Telemetry and the Insights Operator is considered a connected cluster.

Telemetry is the term that Red Hat uses to describe the information being sent to Red Hat by the OpenShift Container Platform Telemeter Client. Lightweight attributes are sent from connected clusters to Red Hat to enable subscription management automation, monitor the health of clusters, assist with support, and improve customer experience.

The Insights Operator gathers OpenShift Container Platform configuration data and sends it to Red Hat. The data is used to produce insights about potential issues that a cluster might be exposed to. These insights are communicated to cluster administrators on OpenShift Cluster Manager.

More information is provided in this document about these two processes.

Telemetry and Insights Operator benefits

Telemetry and the Insights Operator enable the following benefits for end-users:

  • Enhanced identification and resolution of issues. Events that might seem normal to an end-user can be observed by Red Hat from a broader perspective across a fleet of clusters. Some issues can be more rapidly identified from this point of view and resolved without an end-user needing to open a support case or file a Jira issue.

  • Advanced release management. OpenShift Container Platform offers the candidate, fast, and stable release channels, which enable you to choose an update strategy. The graduation of a release from fast to stable is dependent on the success rate of updates and on the events seen during upgrades. With the information provided by connected clusters, Red Hat can improve the quality of releases to stable channels and react more rapidly to issues found in the fast channels.

  • Targeted prioritization of new features and functionality. The data collected provides insights about which areas of OpenShift Container Platform are used most. With this information, Red Hat can focus on developing the new features and functionality that have the greatest impact for our customers.

  • A streamlined support experience. You can provide a cluster ID for a connected cluster when creating a support ticket on the Red Hat Customer Portal. This enables Red Hat to deliver a streamlined support experience that is specific to your cluster, by using the connected information. This document provides more information about that enhanced support experience.

  • Predictive analytics. The insights displayed for your cluster on OpenShift Cluster Manager are enabled by the information collected from connected clusters. Red Hat is investing in applying deep learning, machine learning, and artificial intelligence automation to help identify issues that OpenShift Container Platform clusters are exposed to.

About Telemetry

Telemetry sends a carefully chosen subset of the cluster monitoring metrics to Red Hat. The Telemeter Client fetches the metrics values every four minutes and thirty seconds and uploads the data to Red Hat. These metrics are described in this document.

This stream of data is used by Red Hat to monitor the clusters in real-time and to react as necessary to problems that impact our customers. It also allows Red Hat to roll out OpenShift Container Platform upgrades to customers to minimize service impact and continuously improve the upgrade experience.

This debugging information is available to Red Hat Support and Engineering teams with the same restrictions as accessing data reported through support cases. All connected cluster information is used by Red Hat to help make OpenShift Container Platform better and more intuitive to use.

Additional resources

Information collected by Telemetry

The following information is collected by Telemetry:

System information

  • Version information, including the OpenShift Container Platform cluster version and installed update details that are used to determine update version availability

  • Update information, including the number of updates available per cluster, the channel and image repository used for an update, update progress information, and the number of errors that occur in an update

  • The unique random identifier that is generated during an installation

  • Configuration details that help Red Hat Support to provide beneficial support for customers, including node configuration at the cloud infrastructure level, hostnames, IP addresses, Kubernetes pod names, namespaces, and services

  • The OpenShift Container Platform framework components installed in a cluster and their condition and status

  • Events for all namespaces listed as "related objects" for a degraded Operator

  • Information about degraded software

  • Information about the validity of certificates

  • The name of the provider platform that OpenShift Container Platform is deployed on and the data center location

Sizing Information

  • Sizing information about clusters, machine types, and machines, including the number of CPU cores and the amount of RAM used for each

  • The number of etcd members and the number of objects stored in the etcd cluster

  • Number of application builds by build strategy type

Usage information

  • Usage information about components, features, and extensions

  • Usage details about Technology Previews and unsupported configurations

Telemetry does not collect identifying information such as usernames or passwords. Red Hat does not intend to collect personal information. If Red Hat discovers that personal information has been inadvertently received, Red Hat will delete such information. To the extent that any telemetry data constitutes personal data, please refer to the Red Hat Privacy Statement for more information about Red Hat’s privacy practices.

Additional resources

About the Insights Operator

The Insights Operator periodically gathers configuration and component failure status and, by default, reports that data every two hours to Red Hat. This information enables Red Hat to assess configuration and deeper failure data than is reported through Telemetry.

Users of OpenShift Container Platform can display the report of each cluster in the Insights Advisor service on Red Hat Hybrid Cloud Console. If any issues have been identified, Insights provides further details and, if available, steps on how to solve a problem.

The Insights Operator does not collect identifying information, such as user names, passwords, or certificates. See Red Hat Insights Data & Application Security for information about Red Hat Insights data collection and controls.

Red Hat uses all connected cluster information to:

  • Identify potential cluster issues and provide a solution and preventive actions in the Insights Advisor service on Red Hat Hybrid Cloud Console

  • Improve OpenShift Container Platform by providing aggregated and critical information to product and support teams

  • Make OpenShift Container Platform more intuitive

Additional resources

Information collected by the Insights Operator

The following information is collected by the Insights Operator:

  • General information about your cluster and its components to identify issues that are specific to your OpenShift Container Platform version and environment

  • Configuration files, such as the image registry configuration, of your cluster to determine incorrect settings and issues that are specific to parameters you set

  • Errors that occur in the cluster components

  • Progress information of running updates, and the status of any component upgrades

  • Details of the platform that OpenShift Container Platform is deployed on and the region that the cluster is located in

  • Cluster workload information transformed into discreet Secure Hash Algorithm (SHA) values, which allows Red Hat to assess workloads for security and version vulnerabilities without disclosing sensitive details

  • If an Operator reports an issue, information is collected about core OpenShift Container Platform pods in the openshift-* and kube-* projects. This includes state, resource, security context, volume information, and more

Additional resources

Understanding Telemetry and Insights Operator data flow

The Telemeter Client collects selected time series data from the Prometheus API. The time series data is uploaded to api.openshift.com every four minutes and thirty seconds for processing.

The Insights Operator gathers selected data from the Kubernetes API and the Prometheus API into an archive. The archive is uploaded to OpenShift Cluster Manager every two hours for processing. The Insights Operator also downloads the latest Insights analysis from OpenShift Cluster Manager. This is used to populate the Insights status pop-up that is included in the Overview page in the OpenShift Container Platform web console.

All of the communication with Red Hat occurs over encrypted channels by using Transport Layer Security (TLS) and mutual certificate authentication. All of the data is encrypted in transit and at rest.

Access to the systems that handle customer data is controlled through multi-factor authentication and strict authorization controls. Access is granted on a need-to-know basis and is limited to required operations.

Telemetry and Insights Operator data flow

Telemetry and Insights Operator data flow

Additional resources

  • See Monitoring overview for more information about the OpenShift Container Platform monitoring stack.

  • See Configuring your firewall for details about configuring a firewall and enabling endpoints for Telemetry and Insights

Additional details about how remote health monitoring data is used

The information collected to enable remote health monitoring is detailed in Information collected by Telemetry and Information collected by the Insights Operator.

As further described in the preceding sections of this document, Red Hat collects data about your use of the Red Hat Product(s) for purposes such as providing support and upgrades, optimizing performance or configuration, minimizing service impacts, identifying and remediating threats, troubleshooting, improving the offerings and user experience, responding to issues, and for billing purposes if applicable.

Collection safeguards

Red Hat employs technical and organizational measures designed to protect the telemetry and configuration data.

Sharing

Red Hat may share the data collected through Telemetry and the Insights Operator internally within Red Hat to improve your user experience. Red Hat may share telemetry and configuration data with its business partners in an aggregated form that does not identify customers to help the partners better understand their markets and their customers’ use of Red Hat offerings or to ensure the successful integration of products jointly supported by those partners.

Third parties

Red Hat may engage certain third parties to assist in the collection, analysis, and storage of the Telemetry and configuration data.

User control / enabling and disabling telemetry and configuration data collection

You may disable OpenShift Container Platform Telemetry and the Insights Operator by following the instructions in Opting out of remote health reporting.