Caution
Grafana Alloy is the new name for our distribution of the OTel collector. Grafana Agent has been deprecated and is in Long-Term Support (LTS) through October 31, 2025. Grafana Agent will reach an End-of-Life (EOL) on November 1, 2025. Read more about why we recommend migrating to Grafana Alloy.
This is documentation for the next version of Agent. For the latest stable release, go to the latest version.
discovery.docker
discovery.docker
discovers Docker Engine containers and exposes them as targets.
Usage
discovery.docker "LABEL" {
host = DOCKER_ENGINE_HOST
}
Arguments
The following arguments are supported:
Name | Type | Description | Default | Required |
---|---|---|---|---|
host | string | Address of the Docker Daemon to connect to. | yes | |
port | number | Port to use for collecting metrics when containers don’t have any port mappings. | 80 | no |
host_networking_host | string | Host to use if the container is in host networking mode. | "localhost" | no |
refresh_interval | duration | Frequency to refresh list of containers. | "1m" | no |
bearer_token_file | string | File containing a bearer token to authenticate with. | no | |
bearer_token | secret | Bearer token to authenticate with. | no | |
enable_http2 | bool | Whether HTTP2 is supported for requests. | true | no |
follow_redirects | bool | Whether redirects returned by the server should be followed. | true | no |
proxy_url | string | HTTP proxy to send requests through. | no | |
no_proxy | string | Comma-separated list of IP addresses, CIDR notations, and domain names to exclude from proxying. | no | |
proxy_from_environment | bool | Use the proxy URL indicated by environment variables. | false | no |
proxy_connect_header | map(list(secret)) | Specifies headers to send to proxies during CONNECT requests. | no |
At most, one of the following can be provided:
no_proxy
can contain IPs, CIDR notations, and domain names. IP and domain
names can contain port numbers. proxy_url
must be configured if no_proxy
is configured.
proxy_from_environment
uses the environment variables HTTP_PROXY, HTTPS_PROXY
and NO_PROXY (or the lowercase versions thereof). Requests use the proxy from
the environment variable matching their scheme, unless excluded by NO_PROXY.
proxy_url
and no_proxy
must not be configured if proxy_from_environment
is configured.
proxy_connect_header
should only be configured if proxy_url
or proxy_from_environment
are configured.
Blocks
The following blocks are supported inside the definition of
discovery.docker
:
Hierarchy | Block | Description | Required |
---|---|---|---|
filter | filter | Filters discoverable resources. | no |
basic_auth | basic_auth | Configure basic_auth for authenticating to the endpoint. | no |
authorization | authorization | Configure generic authorization to the endpoint. | no |
oauth2 | oauth2 | Configure OAuth2 for authenticating to the endpoint. | no |
oauth2 > tls_config | tls_config | Configure TLS settings for connecting to the endpoint. | no |
tls_config | tls_config | Configure TLS settings for connecting to the endpoint. | no |
The >
symbol indicates deeper levels of nesting. For example,
oauth2 > tls_config
refers to a tls_config
block defined inside
an oauth2
block.
filter block
The filter
block configures a filter to pass to the Docker Engine to limit
the amount of containers returned. The filter
block can be specified multiple
times to provide more than one filter.
Name | Type | Description | Default | Required |
---|---|---|---|---|
name | string | Filter name to use. | yes | |
values | list(string) | Values to pass to the filter. | yes |
Refer to List containers from the Docker Engine API documentation for the list of supported filters and their meaning.
basic_auth block
Name | Type | Description | Default | Required |
---|---|---|---|---|
password_file | string | File containing the basic auth password. | no | |
password | secret | Basic auth password. | no | |
username | string | Basic auth username. | no |
password
and password_file
are mutually exclusive, and only one can be provided inside a basic_auth
block.
authorization block
Name | Type | Description | Default | Required |
---|---|---|---|---|
credentials_file | string | File containing the secret value. | no | |
credentials | secret | Secret value. | no | |
type | string | Authorization type, for example, “Bearer”. | no |
credential
and credentials_file
are mutually exclusive, and only one can be provided inside an authorization
block.
oauth2 block
Name | Type | Description | Default | Required |
---|---|---|---|---|
client_id | string | OAuth2 client ID. | no | |
client_secret_file | string | File containing the OAuth2 client secret. | no | |
client_secret | secret | OAuth2 client secret. | no | |
endpoint_params | map(string) | Optional parameters to append to the token URL. | no | |
proxy_url | string | HTTP proxy to send requests through. | no | |
no_proxy | string | Comma-separated list of IP addresses, CIDR notations, and domain names to exclude from proxying. | no | |
proxy_from_environment | bool | Use the proxy URL indicated by environment variables. | false | no |
proxy_connect_header | map(list(secret)) | Specifies headers to send to proxies during CONNECT requests. | no | |
scopes | list(string) | List of scopes to authenticate with. | no | |
token_url | string | URL to fetch the token from. | no |
client_secret
and client_secret_file
are mutually exclusive, and only one can be provided inside an oauth2
block.
The oauth2
block may also contain a separate tls_config
sub-block.
no_proxy
can contain IPs, CIDR notations, and domain names. IP and domain
names can contain port numbers. proxy_url
must be configured if no_proxy
is configured.
proxy_from_environment
uses the environment variables HTTP_PROXY, HTTPS_PROXY
and NO_PROXY (or the lowercase versions thereof). Requests use the proxy from
the environment variable matching their scheme, unless excluded by NO_PROXY.
proxy_url
and no_proxy
must not be configured if proxy_from_environment
is configured.
proxy_connect_header
should only be configured if proxy_url
or proxy_from_environment
are configured.
tls_config block
Name | Type | Description | Default | Required |
---|---|---|---|---|
ca_pem | string | CA PEM-encoded text to validate the server with. | no | |
ca_file | string | CA certificate to validate the server with. | no | |
cert_pem | string | Certificate PEM-encoded text for client authentication. | no | |
cert_file | string | Certificate file for client authentication. | no | |
insecure_skip_verify | bool | Disables validation of the server certificate. | no | |
key_file | string | Key file for client authentication. | no | |
key_pem | secret | Key PEM-encoded text for client authentication. | no | |
min_version | string | Minimum acceptable TLS version. | no | |
server_name | string | ServerName extension to indicate the name of the server. | no |
The following pairs of arguments are mutually exclusive and can’t both be set simultaneously:
ca_pem
andca_file
cert_pem
andcert_file
key_pem
andkey_file
When configuring client authentication, both the client certificate (using
cert_pem
or cert_file
) and the client key (using key_pem
or key_file
)
must be provided.
When min_version
is not provided, the minimum acceptable TLS version is
inherited from Go’s default minimum version, TLS 1.2. If min_version
is
provided, it must be set to one of the following strings:
"TLS10"
(TLS 1.0)"TLS11"
(TLS 1.1)"TLS12"
(TLS 1.2)"TLS13"
(TLS 1.3)
Exported fields
The following fields are exported and can be referenced by other components:
Name | Type | Description |
---|---|---|
targets | list(map(string)) | The set of targets discovered from the docker API. |
Each target includes the following labels:
__meta_docker_container_id
: ID of the container.__meta_docker_container_name
: Name of the container.__meta_docker_container_network_mode
: Network mode of the container.__meta_docker_container_label_<labelname>
: Each label from the container.__meta_docker_network_id
: ID of the Docker network the container is in.__meta_docker_network_name
: Name of the Docker network the container is in.__meta_docker_network_ingress
: Set totrue
if the Docker network is an ingress network.__meta_docker_network_internal
: Set totrue
if the Docker network is an internal network.__meta_docker_network_label_<labelname>
: Each label from the network the container is in.__meta_docker_network_scope
: The scope of the network the container is in.__meta_docker_network_ip
: The IP of the container in the network.__meta_docker_port_private
: The private port on the container.__meta_docker_port_public
: The publicly exposed port from the container, if a port mapping exists.__meta_docker_port_public_ip
: The public IP of the container, if a port mapping exists.
Each discovered container maps to one target per unique combination of networks and port mappings used by the container.
Component health
discovery.docker
is only reported as unhealthy when given an invalid
configuration. In those cases, exported fields retain their last healthy
values.
Debug information
discovery.docker
does not expose any component-specific debug information.
Debug metrics
discovery.docker
does not expose any component-specific debug metrics.
Examples
Linux or macOS hosts
This example discovers Docker containers when the host machine is macOS or Linux:
discovery.docker "containers" {
host = "unix:///var/run/docker.sock"
}
prometheus.scrape "demo" {
targets = discovery.docker.containers.targets
forward_to = [prometheus.remote_write.demo.receiver]
}
prometheus.remote_write "demo" {
endpoint {
url = PROMETHEUS_REMOTE_WRITE_URL
basic_auth {
username = USERNAME
password = PASSWORD
}
}
}
Replace the following:
PROMETHEUS_REMOTE_WRITE_URL
: The URL of the Prometheus remote_write-compatible server to send metrics to.USERNAME
: The username to use for authentication to the remote_write API.PASSWORD
: The password to use for authentication to the remote_write API.
Windows hosts
This example discovers Docker containers when the host machine is Windows:
discovery.docker "containers" {
host = "tcp://localhost:2375"
}
prometheus.scrape "demo" {
targets = discovery.docker.containers.example.targets
forward_to = [prometheus.remote_write.demo.receiver]
}
prometheus.remote_write "demo" {
endpoint {
url = PROMETHEUS_REMOTE_WRITE_URL
basic_auth {
username = USERNAME
password = PASSWORD
}
}
}
Replace the following:
PROMETHEUS_REMOTE_WRITE_URL
: The URL of the Prometheus remote_write-compatible server to send metrics to.USERNAME
: The username to use for authentication to the remote_write API.PASSWORD
: The password to use for authentication to the remote_write API.
NOTE: This example requires the “Expose daemon on tcp://localhost:2375 without TLS” setting to be enabled in the Docker Engine settings.
Compatible components
discovery.docker
has exports that can be consumed by the following components:
- Components that consume Targets
Note
Connecting some components may not be sensible or components may require further configuration to make the connection work correctly. Refer to the linked documentation for more details.