---
title: Telegraf Documentation
description: Telegraf plugin for collecting metrics from Telegraf Internal
url: https://docs.influxdata.com/telegraf/v1/input-plugins/internal/
estimated_tokens: 1591
product: Telegraf
version: v1
---

-   Telegraf v1.2.0+

# Telegraf Internal Input Plugin

This plugin collects metrics about the telegraf agent and its plugins.

Some metrics are aggregates across all instances of a plugin type.

**Introduced in:** Telegraf v1.2.0 **Tags:** applications **OS support:** all

## Global configuration options

Plugins support additional global and plugin configuration settings for tasks such as modifying metrics, tags, and fields, creating aliases, and configuring plugin ordering. See [CONFIGURATION.md](/telegraf/v1/configuration/#plugins) for more details.

## Configuration

```toml
# Collect statistics about itself
[[inputs.internal]]
  ## If true, collect telegraf memory stats.
  # collect_memstats = true

  ## If true, collect metrics from Go's runtime.metrics. For a full list see:
  ##   https://pkg.go.dev/runtime/metrics
  # collect_gostats = false

  ## Collect statistics per plugin instance and not per plugin type
  # per_instance = false
```

## Metrics

memstats are collected using the [Go runtime framework](https://golang.org/pkg/runtime/#MemStats)

-   internal\_memstats
    -   alloc\_bytes
    -   frees
    -   heap\_alloc\_bytes
    -   heap\_idle\_bytes
    -   heap\_in\_use\_bytes
    -   heap\_objects\_bytes
    -   heap\_released\_bytes
    -   heap\_sys\_bytes
    -   mallocs
    -   num\_gc
    -   pointer\_lookups
    -   sys\_bytes
    -   total\_alloc\_bytes

agent stats collect aggregate stats on all telegraf plugins.

-   internal\_agent
    -   gather\_errors
    -   gather\_timeouts
    -   metrics\_dropped
    -   metrics\_gathered
    -   metrics\_written

internal\_gather stats collect aggregate stats on all input plugins that are of the same input type. They are tagged with `input=<plugin_name>` `version=<telegraf_version>` and `go_version=<go_build_version>`.

-   internal\_gather
    -   gather\_time\_ns
    -   metrics\_gathered
    -   gather\_timeouts

internal\_write stats collect aggregate stats on all output plugins that are of the same input type. They are tagged with `output=<plugin_name>` and `version=<telegraf_version>`.

-   internal\_write
    -   buffer\_limit
    -   buffer\_size
    -   metrics\_added
    -   metrics\_written
    -   metrics\_dropped
    -   metrics\_filtered
    -   write\_time\_ns

internal\_<plugin\_name> are metrics which are defined on a per-plugin basis, and usually contain tags which differentiate each instance of a particular type of plugin and `version=<telegraf_version>`.

-   internal\_<plugin\_name>
    -   individual plugin-specific fields, such as requests counts.

All measurements for specific plugins are tagged with information relevant to each particular plugin and with `version=<telegraf_version>`.

## Example Output

```text
internal_memstats,host=tyrion alloc_bytes=4457408i,sys_bytes=10590456i,pointer_lookups=7i,mallocs=17642i,frees=7473i,heap_sys_bytes=6848512i,heap_idle_bytes=1368064i,heap_in_use_bytes=5480448i,heap_released_bytes=0i,total_alloc_bytes=6875560i,heap_alloc_bytes=4457408i,heap_objects_bytes=10169i,num_gc=2i 1480682800000000000
internal_agent,host=tyrion,go_version=1.12.7,version=1.99.0 metrics_written=18i,metrics_dropped=0i,metrics_gathered=19i,gather_errors=0i,gather_timeouts=0i 1480682800000000000
internal_write,output=file,host=tyrion,version=1.99.0 buffer_limit=10000i,write_time_ns=636609i,metrics_added=18i,metrics_written=18i,buffer_size=0i 1480682800000000000
internal_gather,input=internal,host=tyrion,version=1.99.0 metrics_gathered=19i,gather_time_ns=442114i,gather_timeouts=0i 1480682800000000000
internal_gather,input=http_listener,host=tyrion,version=1.99.0 metrics_gathered=0i,gather_time_ns=167285i,gather_timeouts=0i 1480682800000000000
internal_http_listener,address=:8186,host=tyrion,version=1.99.0 queries_received=0i,writes_received=0i,requests_received=0i,buffers_created=0i,requests_served=0i,pings_received=0i,bytes_received=0i,not_founds_served=0i,pings_served=0i,queries_served=0i,writes_served=0i 1480682800000000000
internal_mqtt_consumer,host=tyrion,version=1.99.0 messages_received=622i,payload_size=37942i 1657282270000000000
```

#### Related

-   [Configure plugins](/telegraf/v1/configure_plugins/)
-   [Telegraf Internal Plugin Source](https://github.com/influxdata/telegraf/tree/v1.38.4/plugins/inputs/internal/README.md)