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---
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layout: docs
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page_title: Service Mesh Observability - Overview
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description: >-
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To use Consul's observability features, configure sidecar proxies in the service mesh to collect and emit L7 metrics. Learn about configuring metrics destinations and a service's protocol and upstreams.
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---
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# Service Mesh Observability Overview
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In order to take advantage of the service mesh's L7 observability features you will need
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to:
- Deploy sidecar proxies that are capable of emitting metrics with each of your
services. We have first class support for Envoy.
- Define where your proxies should send metrics that they collect.
- Define the protocols for each of your services.
- Define the upstreams for each of your services.
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If you are using Envoy as your sidecar proxy, you will need to [enable
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gRPC](/consul/docs/agent/config/config-files#grpc_port) on your client agents. To define the
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metrics destination and service protocol you may want to enable [configuration
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entries](/consul/docs/agent/config/config-files#config_entries) and [centralized service
configuration](/consul/docs/agent/config/config-files#enable_central_service_config).
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### Kubernetes
If you are using Kubernetes, the Helm chart can simplify much of the configuration needed to enable observability. See
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our [Kubernetes observability docs](/consul/docs/k8s/connect/observability/metrics) for more information.
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### Metrics destination
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For Envoy the metrics destination can be configured in the proxy configuration
entry's `config` section.
```
kind = "proxy-defaults"
name = "global"
config {
"envoy_dogstatsd_url": "udp://127.0.0.1:9125"
}
```
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Find other possible metrics syncs in the [Envoy documentation](/consul/docs/connect/proxies/envoy#bootstrap-configuration).
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### Service protocol
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You can specify the [`protocol`](/consul/docs/connect/config-entries/service-defaults#protocol)
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for all service instances in the `service-defaults` configuration entry. You can also override the default protocol when defining and registering proxies in a service definition file. Refer to [Expose Paths Configuration Reference](/consul/docs/connect/proxies/proxy-config-reference#expose-paths-configuration-reference) for additional information.
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By default, proxies only provide L4 metrics.
Defining the protocol allows proxies to handle requests at the L7
protocol and emit L7 metrics. It also allows proxies to make per-request
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load balancing and routing decisions.
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### Service upstreams
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You can set the upstream for each service using the proxy's
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[`upstreams`](/consul/docs/connect/proxies/proxy-config-reference#upstreams)
sidecar parameter, which can be defined in a service's [sidecar registration](/consul/docs/connect/proxies/deploy-sidecar-services).
