Istio Telemetry V2 Shows Zero Metrics

You encounter a istio configuration issue that prevents your workflow from completing. This guide walks through the fix step by step.

Wrong ❌

apiVersion: telemetry.istio.io/v1alpha1
kind: Telemetry
metadata: { name: mesh-default, namespace: istio-system }
spec:
  accessLogging: [{ providers: [{ name: envoy }] }]
  # Missing metrics configuration

Wrong Output

Prometheus scraping shows zero traffic metrics. istio_requests_total is always 0.

Right ✅

apiVersion: telemetry.istio.io/v1alpha1
kind: Telemetry
metadata: { name: mesh-default, namespace: istio-system }
spec:
  metrics: [{ providers: [{ name: prometheus }], overrides: [{ match: { metric: ALL_METRICS }, mode: CLIENT_AND_SERVER }] }]
  accessLogging: [{ providers: [{ name: envoy }] }]

Right Output

istio_requests_total shows real traffic. Metrics: request count, duration, size.

Prevention

• Enable Prometheus metrics provider in Telemetry.
• Set mode to CLIENT_AND_SERVER for full visibility.
• Verify Prometheus can scrape istio-proxy metrics.
• Check telemetry with istioctl describe pod.
• Test requests and check metrics after 15s.

DodaTech applies similar defensive patterns across Doda Browser, DodaZIP, and Durga Antivirus Pro infrastructure for production reliability.

Common Mistakes with telemetry v2

1. Forgetting deriving (Show, Eq) on custom data types needed for debugging
2. Placing the wildcard pattern first in case expressions, making all subsequent patterns unreachable
3. Using head and tail instead of pattern matching, causing runtime errors on empty lists

These mistakes appear frequently in real-world ISTIO code. DodaTech's contributors have identified these patterns through analysis of open-source projects and production systems.

Practice Exercise

Write a pure function that safely divides two integers using Maybe, then test it with edge cases like division by zero and negative numbers.

This exercise reinforces the concepts covered in this guide. Try implementing it before checking online solutions.

FAQ

This quick fix is part of the DodaTech infrastructure engineering series. Learn more at DodaTech tutorials.