# Monitoring dead letter queue (DLQ)

**URL:** <https://discuss.elastic.co/t/monitoring-dead-letter-queue-dlq/166715>\
**Category:** Logstash\
**Tags:** elastic-stack-monitoring\
**Created:** [February 1, 2019, 10:44am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/monitoring-dead-letter-queue-dlq/166715 "2019-02-01T10:44:55Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![beckjim](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/dec6dc/32.png) [@beckjim](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/beckjim)\
**Post date:** [February 1, 2019, 10:44am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/monitoring-dead-letter-queue-dlq/166715/1 "2019-02-01T10:44:55Z")

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Hello all,

I'm wondering is there a proper way to monitor the contents of the dead letter queue?  
Maybe I missed something ...

None of the monitoring APIs seem to yield are data about dlq's.  
Items of interesst would be

- number of items stored
- disk usage of dlq (beside directly checking the dlq path)

Actually I looking for a monitoring API similar to those for persistent queues (which is technically almost the same). Maybe something worth to be included in the Kibana UI ...

Kind regards,  
Stefan

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**Author:** ![Evesy](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/evesy/32/29520_2.png) [@Evesy](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/Evesy)\
**Post date:** [February 2, 2019, 11:11pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/monitoring-dead-letter-queue-dlq/166715/2 "2019-02-02T23:11:13Z")

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I haven't found anything that outlines the number of items stored in a given DLQ however the [Logstash metrics endpoint](https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/logstash/current/monitoring.html) does expose for each pipeline a `queue_size_in_bytes` metric for the DLQ.

We've been using this to monitor DLQ sizes with a fairly rudimentary check if it's over a certain byte threshold. Hope that helps a little

Cheers,  
Mike

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**Author:** ![beckjim](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/dec6dc/32.png) [@beckjim](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/beckjim)\
**Post date:** [February 4, 2019, 8:17am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/monitoring-dead-letter-queue-dlq/166715/3 "2019-02-04T08:17:59Z")

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Hello Mike,

thanks a lot, that works!

It seems that the field `queue_size_in_bytes` is not documented.  
Maybe I should have look at the sourcecode ...

Cheers,  
Stefan

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**Author:** ![system](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/original/3X/1/a/1ac57faf039f6b580b3f104ef42a2a89e41014de.png) [@system](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/system)\
**Post date:** [March 4, 2019, 8:18am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/monitoring-dead-letter-queue-dlq/166715/4 "2019-03-04T08:18:02Z")

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