Monitoring service dependencies with network map

Visualization of service dependencies for Network Explorer.

The Network Explorer network map is a visualization of traffic activities and service dependencies in your network. You can view the network map in all Network Explorer navigators, and use the map to switch between Network Explorer navigators.

Components in the network map

The network map consists of the following components.

Component

Definition

Description

Network workload

A service in your network.

  • Network workloads are represented as circles.

  • The names for these services come from your Kubernetes environment, Docker metadata, Linux service managers, such as systemd, DNS, and IP address data.

Network edge

The amount of TCP network traffic from a source to a destination workload.

  • Network edges are represented as broken arrows connecting the circles.

  • The arrow direction corresponds to the network traffic direction.

  • Each arrow has a number indicating the amount of data coming from a source network workload to a destination network workload in a certain time period. By default, the time period is the past 3 hours.

For example, the following network map shows traffic between the emailservice network workload and the checkoutservice network workload in both directions. The emailservice network workload sends 245 KiB of data to checkoutservice, and receives 495 KiB of data from checkoutservice for the past 3 hours.

Network Explorer network map showing two network workloads connected by two network edges. Traffic flows in both directions. The ``emailservice`` network workload sends 245 KiB of data to ``checkoutservice``, and receives 495 KiB of data from ``checkoutservice`` for the past 3 hours.

Drill down into specific connections

You can view connections related to a network workload or network edge by selecting it on the network map.

  • When you select a network workload, you get a drilldown map that shows only network edges and network workloads connected to the selected network workload.

    For example, the following drilldown map shows the selected productcatalogservice network workload along with its connected network workloads, and all network edges coming to and from productcatalogservice.

    Drilldown map showing all network workloads and edges connected to the selected ``productcatalogservice`` network workload.

  • When you select a network edge, you get a drilldown map that shows only two network workloads connected by the selected network edge.

    For example, the following drilldown map shows the selected network edge along with the source network workload prometheus-node-exporter and the destination network workload kubelet.

    Drilldown map showing network edge connecting the ``prometheus-node-exporter`` and ``kubelet`` network workloads. Traffic comes from ``prometheus-node-exporter`` to ``kubelet``.
Note: If you are in the Network edge navigator, selecting a network workload opens the Network workload navigator. If you are in the Network workload navigator, selecting a network edge opens the Network edge navigator.

Change time period for network edge data

By default, a network edge shows the amount of data coming from a source network workload to a network destination workload in the past 3 hours. You can change the time period by selecting a different option, or enter a custom time in the time drop-down menu.

Drop-down menu to change time period for network edge data.