VictoriaMetrics/docs/managed-victoriametrics/how-to-monitor-k8s.md

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3	3	Kubernetes Monitoring with Managed VictoriaMetrics	docs parent weight managed 3

Kubernetes Monitoring with Managed VictoriaMetrics

Monitoring kubernetes cluster is necessary to build SLO/SLI, to analyze performance and cost-efficiency of your workloads.

To enable enable kubernetes cluster monitoring, we will be collecting metrics about cluster performance and utilization from kubernetes components like kube-api-server, kube-controller-manager, kube-scheduler, kube-state-metrics, etcd, core-dns, kubelet and kube-proxy. We will also install some recording rules, alert rules and dashboards to provide visibility of cluster performance, as well as alerting for cluster metrics. For node resource utilization we will be collecting metrics from node-exporter. We will also install dashboard and alerts for node related metrics

For workloads monitoring in kubernetes cluster we will have VictoriaMetrics Operator. It enables us to define scrape jobs using kubernetes CRDs VMServiceScrape, VMPodScrape. To add alerts or recording rules for workloads we can use VMRule CRD

Overview

In this guide we will be using victoria-metrics-k8s-stack helm chart

This chart will install VMOperator, VMAgent, NodeExporter, kube-state-metrics, grafana and some service scrape configurations to start monitoring kuberentes cluster components

Prerequisites

• Active Managed VictoriaMetrics instance. You can learn how to signup for Managed VictoriaMetrics here.
• Access to your kubernetes cluster
• Helm binary. You can find installation here

Installation steps

Install the Helm chart in a custom namespace

1. Create a unique Kubernetes namespace, for example monitoring

   ```bash kubectl create namespace monitoring ```

2. Create kubernetes-secrets with token to access your dbaas deployment

   ```bash kubectl --namespace monitoring create secret generic dbaas-write-access-token --from-literal=bearerToken=your-token kubectl --namespace monitoring create secret generic dbaas-read-access-token --from-literal=bearerToken=your-token ```
   You can find your access token on the "Access" tab of your deployment

3. Set up a Helm repository using the following commands:

   ```bash helm repo add grafana https://grafana.github.io/helm-charts helm repo add prometheus-community https://prometheus-community.github.io/helm-charts helm repo add vm https://victoriametrics.github.io/helm-charts helm repo update ```

4. Create a YAML file of Helm values called dbaas.yaml with following content

   ```yaml externalVM: read: url: bearerTokenSecret: name: dbaas-write-access-token key: bearerToken write: url: bearerTokenSecret: name: dbaas-read-access-token key: bearerToken

   vmsingle: enabled: false

   vmcluster: enabled: false

   vmalert: enabled: true spec: evaluationInterval: 15s

   vmagent: enabled: true

   spec: scrapeInterval: 30s externalLabels: cluster:

   dependencies

   Grafana dependency chart configuration. For possible values refer to https://github.com/grafana/helm-charts/tree/main/charts/grafana#configuration

   grafana: enabled: true

   </div>
   

5. Install VictoriaMetrics-k8s-stack helm chart

   ```bash helm --namespace monitoring install vm vm/victoria-metrics-k8s-stack -f dbaas.yaml -n monitoring ```

Connect grafana

Connect to grafana and create your datasource

If you are using external grafana, you can skip steps 1-3 and you will need to import dashboards that can be found here manually

1. Get grafana password

   ```bash kubectl --namespace monitoring get secret vm-grafana -o jsonpath="{.data.admin-password}" | base64 -d ```

2. Connect to grafana

   ```bash kubectl --namespace monitoring port-forward service/vm-grafana 3000:80 ```

3. Open grafana in your browser http://localhost:3000/datasources

   Use admin as username and password from previous step

4. Click on add datasource Choose VictoriaMetrics or Prometheus as datasource type. Make sure you made this datasource as default for dashboards to work.

   You can find token and URL in your deployment, on Access tab

   

Test it

• You should be able to see data that was sent to your dbaas using VMAgent dashboard http://localhost:3000/d/G7Z9GzMGz/victoriametrics-vmagent/
• You also will be able to see bunch of kuberentes dashboards in your grafana