Configuring Envoy to send metrics to SkyWalking

In order to let Envoy to send metrics to SkyWalking, we need to feed Envoy with a configuration which contains stats_sinks that includes envoy.metrics_service. This envoy.metrics_service should be configured as a config.grpc_service entry.

The interesting parts of the config is shown in the config below:

stats_sinks:
  - name: envoy.metrics_service
    config:
      grpc_service:
        # Note: we can use google_grpc implementation as well.
        envoy_grpc:
          cluster_name: service_skywalking

static_resources:
  ...
  clusters:
  - name: service_skywalking
    connect_timeout: 5s
    type: LOGICAL_DNS
    http2_protocol_options: {}
    dns_lookup_family: V4_ONLY
    lb_policy: ROUND_ROBIN
    load_assignment:
      cluster_name: service_skywalking
      endpoints:
      - lb_endpoints:
        - endpoint:
            address:
              socket_address:
                address: skywalking
                # This is the port where SkyWalking serving the Envoy Metrics Service gRPC stream.
                port_value: 11800

A more complete static configuration, can be observed here.

Note that Envoy can also be configured dynamically through xDS Protocol.

Metrics data

Some of the Envoy statistics are listed in this list. A sample data that contains identifier can be found here, while the metrics only can be observed here.