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Monitor Gateway API TCPRoute and UDPRoute without cardinality sprawl

Practical golden signals for Kubernetes Gateway API v1.6 L4 traffic: connections, bytes, errors, backends, and active series without flooding Prometheus with useless labels.

A hands-on guide for Prometheus/Grafana dashboards and alerts on TCPRoute and UDPRoute: inventory, PromQL, metric relabeling, canary validation, and proof that L4 traffic is neither blind nor expensive.

Created: August 23, 2026

Published: August 23, 2026

Estimated time40 min

LevelIntermediate

Before you startA Kubernetes cluster with Gateway API and a controller exposing dataplane or gateway metrics

PlatformsLinux / Docker

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Linux

Inventory L4 routes, normalize useful labels, add Prometheus rules, and validate cardinality before enabling alerts.

kubectlcurlpromtoolPrometheus accessread access to gateway/controller metrics

Inventory L4 routes

kubectl get gateway,tcproute,udproute -A -o wide

Review attachment and conditions

kubectl describe gateway edge-gw -n platform
kubectl describe tcproute tcp-payments -n shop
kubectl describe udproute dns-gateway -n platform

Measure TSDB cardinality

curl -s http://prometheus:9090/api/v1/status/tsdb | jq '.data.seriesCountByLabelName[:20]'

Validate rules

promtool check rules gateway-l4.rules.yaml
promtool test rules gateway-l4.test.yaml

Also available inMonitorizar TCPRoute y UDPRoute de Gateway API sin disparar la cardinalidad

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