Beautiful Dashboards with Grafana and Prometheus - Monitoring Kubernetes Tutorial

Step-by-Step Tutorial for Setting up Grafana and Prometheus to Monitor a Kubernetes Cluster:

1. Check Communication with Kubernetes Cluster:

   • Use Ansible playbook to automatically set up Prometheus to monitor the Kubernetes cluster.
   • Run ansible kubectl get nodes to ensure communication with the cluster. This should return a list of all nodes in the cluster.

2. Install Prometheus with Helm on Kubernetes:

   • Install Prometheus using the Helm chart kube-prometheus-stack to monitor the Kubernetes configuration.
   • Add the Prometheus community chart repository to your local machine by running helm repo update.
   • Create a namespace for monitoring by running kubectl create namespace monitoring.

3. Prepare Values YAML File for Helm Installation:

   • Instead of passing flags during installation, create a values YAML file with default configurations and overrides for customization.
   • Customize the values file to set up Prometheus, Grafana, alerting rules, and other configurations specific to your setup.

4. Create Secrets for Grafana:

   • Generate a secret for Grafana with a username and password using echo and kubectl create secret.
   • Store the secret in the monitoring namespace to securely authenticate Grafana.

5. Install Prometheus Stack with Helm:

   • Run the command helm install -n monitoring prometheus prometheus-community/kube-prometheus-stack -f values.yaml to install the Prometheus stack using the customized values file.

6. Access Grafana Dashboard:

   • After installation, access the Grafana dashboard either through an Ingress or by port forwarding to the Grafana service.
   • Use Lens or CLI to port forward to the Grafana service for local access.

7. Explore Grafana Dashboards:

   • Log in to Grafana with the provided credentials and explore the pre-configured dashboards for monitoring various aspects of the Kubernetes cluster.
   • Customize and set up alerts in Grafana based on metrics and thresholds to monitor cluster health effectively.

8. Monitor and Analyze Cluster Metrics:

   • Use Grafana to monitor CPU utilization, memory usage, network traffic, and other metrics across namespaces and individual pods.
   • Analyze the data to identify any anomalies or performance issues within the cluster.

9. Troubleshooting and Optimization:

   • Review the metrics and adjust resource requests and limits for pods based on the observed data to optimize cluster performance.
   • Set up alerts in Alert Manager to notify about critical issues or threshold breaches in real-time.

10. Finalize Setup and Maintenance:

    • Regularly monitor the Grafana dashboards and Prometheus metrics to ensure the Kubernetes cluster is running smoothly.
    • Make necessary adjustments to configurations, alerts, and resource allocations based on monitoring insights for efficient cluster management.

By following these steps, you can set up Grafana and Prometheus to monitor your Kubernetes cluster effectively and visualize meaningful data for better cluster management and performance optimization.