VictoriaMetrics/docs/guides/k8s-monitoring-via-vm-single/README.md

This guide covers:

• The setup of a VictoriaMetrics Single in Kubernetes via Helm charts
• How to scrape metrics from k8s components using service discovery
• How to visualize stored data
• How to store metrics in VictoriaMetrics tsdb

Precondition

We will use:

• Kubernetes cluster 1.31.1-gke.1678000

We use GKE cluster from GCP but this guide is also applied on any Kubernetes cluster. For example Amazon EKS.

• Helm 3.14+
• kubectl 1.31

1. VictoriaMetrics Helm repository

You need to add the VictoriaMetrics Helm repository to install VictoriaMetrics components. We’re going to use VictoriaMetrics Single. You can do this by running the following command:

helm repo add vm https://victoriametrics.github.io/helm-charts/

Update Helm repositories:

helm repo update

To verify that everything is set up correctly you may run this command:

helm search repo vm/

The expected output is:

NAME                         	CHART VERSION	APP VERSION	DESCRIPTION                                       
vm/victoria-metrics-agent    	0.7.20       	v1.62.0    	Victoria Metrics Agent - collects metrics from ...
vm/victoria-metrics-alert    	0.3.34       	v1.62.0    	Victoria Metrics Alert - executes a list of giv...
vm/victoria-metrics-auth     	0.2.23       	1.62.0     	Victoria Metrics Auth - is a simple auth proxy ...
vm/victoria-metrics-cluster  	0.8.32       	1.62.0     	Victoria Metrics Cluster version - high-perform...
vm/victoria-metrics-k8s-stack	0.2.9        	1.16.0     	Kubernetes monitoring on VictoriaMetrics stack....
vm/victoria-metrics-operator 	0.1.17       	0.16.0     	Victoria Metrics Operator                         
vm/victoria-metrics-single   	0.7.5        	1.62.0     	Victoria Metrics Single version - high-performa...

2. Install VictoriaMetrics Single from Helm Chart

Run this command in your terminal:

helm install vmsingle vm/victoria-metrics-single -f https://docs.victoriametrics.com/guides/examples/guide-vmsingle-values.yaml

Here is full file content guide-vmsingle-values.yaml

server:
  scrape:
    enabled: true
    configMap: ""
    config:
      global:
        scrape_interval: 15s
      scrape_configs:
        - job_name: victoriametrics
          static_configs:
            - targets: [ "localhost:8428" ]
        - job_name: "kubernetes-apiservers"
          kubernetes_sd_configs:
            - role: endpoints
          scheme: https
          tls_config:
            ca_file: /var/run/secrets/kubernetes.io/serviceaccount/ca.crt
            insecure_skip_verify: true
          bearer_token_file: /var/run/secrets/kubernetes.io/serviceaccount/token
          relabel_configs:
            - source_labels:
                [
                    __meta_kubernetes_namespace,
                    __meta_kubernetes_service_name,
                    __meta_kubernetes_endpoint_port_name,
                ]
              action: keep
              regex: default;kubernetes;https
        - job_name: "kubernetes-nodes"
          scheme: https
          tls_config:
            ca_file: /var/run/secrets/kubernetes.io/serviceaccount/ca.crt
            insecure_skip_verify: true
          bearer_token_file: /var/run/secrets/kubernetes.io/serviceaccount/token
          kubernetes_sd_configs:
            - role: node
          relabel_configs:
            - action: labelmap
              regex: __meta_kubernetes_node_label_(.+)
            - target_label: __address__
              replacement: kubernetes.default.svc:443
            - source_labels: [ __meta_kubernetes_node_name ]
              regex: (.+)
              target_label: __metrics_path__
              replacement: /api/v1/nodes/$1/proxy/metrics
        - job_name: "kubernetes-nodes-cadvisor"
          scheme: https
          tls_config:
            ca_file: /var/run/secrets/kubernetes.io/serviceaccount/ca.crt
            insecure_skip_verify: true
          bearer_token_file: /var/run/secrets/kubernetes.io/serviceaccount/token
          kubernetes_sd_configs:
            - role: node
          relabel_configs:
            - action: labelmap
              regex: __meta_kubernetes_node_label_(.+)
            - target_label: __address__
              replacement: kubernetes.default.svc:443
            - source_labels: [ __meta_kubernetes_node_name ]
              regex: (.+)
              target_label: __metrics_path__
              replacement: /api/v1/nodes/$1/proxy/metrics/cadvisor
          metric_relabel_configs:
            - action: replace
              source_labels: [pod]
              regex: '(.+)'
              target_label: pod_name
              replacement: '${1}'
            - action: replace
              source_labels: [container]
              regex: '(.+)'
              target_label: container_name
              replacement: '${1}'
            - action: replace
              target_label: name
              replacement: k8s_stub
            - action: replace
              source_labels: [id]
              regex: '^/system\.slice/(.+)\.service$'
              target_label: systemd_service_name
              replacement: '${1}'

• By running helm install vmsingle vm/victoria-metrics-single we install VictoriaMetrics Single to default namespace inside your cluster
• By adding scrape: enable: true we add and enable autodiscovery scraping from kubernetes cluster to VictoriaMetrics Single
• On line 166 from https://docs.victoriametrics.com/guides/examples/guide-vmsingle-values.yaml we added metric_relabel_configs section that will help us to show Kubernetes metrics on Grafana dashboard.

As a result of the command you will see the following output:

NAME: victoria-metrics
LAST DEPLOYED: Fri Jun 25 12:06:13 2021
NAMESPACE: default
STATUS: deployed
REVISION: 1
TEST SUITE: None
NOTES:
The VictoriaMetrics write api can be accessed via port 8428 on the following DNS name from within your cluster:
    vmsingle-victoria-metrics-single-server.default.svc.cluster.local


Metrics Ingestion:
  Get the Victoria Metrics service URL by running these commands in the same shell:
    export POD_NAME=$(kubectl get pods --namespace default -l "app=server" -o jsonpath="{.items[0].metadata.name}")
    kubectl --namespace default port-forward $POD_NAME 8428

  Write url inside the kubernetes cluster:
    http://vmsingle-victoria-metrics-single-server.default.svc.cluster.local:8428/api/v1/write

Metrics Scrape:
  Pull-based scrapes are enabled
  Scrape config can be displayed by running this command::
    kubectl get cm vmsingle-victoria-metrics-single-server-scrapeconfig -n default

  The target’s information is accessible via api:
    Inside cluster:
      http://vmsingle-victoria-metrics-single-server.default.svc.cluster.local:8428/targets
    Outside cluster:
      You need to port-forward service (see instructions above) and call
      http://<service-host-port>/targets

Read Data:
  The following url can be used as the datasource url in Grafana::
    http://vmsingle-victoria-metrics-single-server.default.svc.cluster.local:8428

For us it’s important to remember the url for the datasource (copy lines from output).

Verify that VictoriaMetrics pod is up and running by executing the following command:

kubectl get pods

The expected output is:

NAME                                                READY   STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE
vmsingle-victoria-metrics-single-server-0   1/1     Running   0          68s

3. Install and connect Grafana to VictoriaMetrics with Helm

Add the Grafana Helm repository.

helm repo add grafana https://grafana.github.io/helm-charts
helm repo update

By installing the Chart with the release name my-grafana, you add the VictoriaMetrics datasource with official dashboard and kubernetes dashboard:

cat <<EOF | helm install my-grafana grafana/grafana -f -
  datasources:
    datasources.yaml:
      apiVersion: 1
      datasources:
        - name: victoriametrics
          type: prometheus
          orgId: 1
          url: http://vmsingle-victoria-metrics-single-server.default.svc.cluster.local:8428
          access: proxy
          isDefault: true
          updateIntervalSeconds: 10
          editable: true

  dashboardProviders:
   dashboardproviders.yaml:
     apiVersion: 1
     providers:
     - name: 'default'
       orgId: 1
       folder: ''
       type: file
       disableDeletion: true
       editable: true
       options:
         path: /var/lib/grafana/dashboards/default

  dashboards:
    default:
      victoriametrics:
        gnetId: 10229
        revision: 22
        datasource: victoriametrics
      kubernetes:
        gnetId: 14205
        revision: 1
        datasource: victoriametrics
EOF

By running this command we:

• Install Grafana from Helm repository.
• Provision VictoriaMetrics datasource with the url from the output above which we copied before.
• Add this dashboard for VictoriaMetrics.
• Add this dashboard to see Kubernetes cluster metrics.

Check the output log in your terminal. To see the password for Grafana admin user use the following command:

kubectl get secret --namespace default my-grafana -o jsonpath="{.data.admin-password}" | base64 --decode ; echo

Expose Grafana service on 127.0.0.1:3000:

export POD_NAME=$(kubectl get pods --namespace default -l "app.kubernetes.io/name=grafana,app.kubernetes.io/instance=my-grafana" -o jsonpath="{.items[0].metadata.name}")

kubectl --namespace default port-forward $POD_NAME 3000

Now Grafana should be accessible on the http://127.0.0.1:3000 address.

4. Check the obtained result in your browser

To check that VictoriaMetrics has collects metrics from the k8s cluster open in browser http://127.0.0.1:3000/dashboards and choose Kubernetes Cluster Monitoring (via Prometheus) dashboard. Use admin for login and password that you previously obtained from kubectl.

You will see something like this:

VictoriaMetrics dashboard also available to use:

5. Final thoughts

• We have set up TimeSeries Database for your k8s cluster.
• Collected metrics from all running pods,nodes, … and store them in VictoriaMetrics database.
• Visualize resources used in Kubernetes cluster by Grafana dashboards.