vSphere with Tanzu using NSX-T - Part9 - Monitoring

In the previous posts we discussed the following:

Part1 - Prerequisites

Part2 - Configure NSX

Part3 - Edge Cluster

Part4 - Tier-0 Gateway and BGP peering

Part5 - Tier-1 Gateway and Segments

Part6 - Create tags, storage policy, and content library

Part7 - Enable workload management

Part8 - Create namespace and deploy Tanzu Kubernetes Cluster

In this article, I will explain some of the popular tools used for monitoring Kubernetes clusters that provides insight into different objects in K8s, status, metrics, logs, and so on.

• Lens
• Octant
• Prometheus and Grafana
• vROps and Kubernetes Management Pack
• Kubebox

-Lens-

Download the Lens binary file from: https://k8slens.dev/

I am installing it on a Windows server. Once the installation is complete, the first thing you have to do is to provide the Kube config file details so that Lens can connect to the Kubernetes cluster and start monitoring it.

Add Cluster

Click File - Add Cluster

You can either browse and select the Kube config file or you can paste the content of your Kube config file as text. I am just pasting it as text.

 

Once you have pasted your Kube config file contents, make sure to select the context, and then click Add cluster.

Deploy Prometheus stack

If you aren't seeing CPU and memory metrics, you will need to install the Prometheus stack on your K8s cluster. And Lens has a feature that deploys the Prometheus stack on your K8s cluster with the click of a button!

Select the cluster icon and click Settings.

Scroll all the way to the end, and under Features, you will find an Install button. In my case, I've already installed it, that's why it's showing the Uninstall button.

Once you click the Install button, Lens will go ahead and install the Prometheus stack on the selected K8s cluster. After few minutes, you should be able to see all the metrics.

You can see a namespace called "lens-metrics" and under that, the Prometheus stack components are deployed.

Following are the service objects that are created as part of the Prometheus stack deployment.

And, here is the PVC that is attached to the Prometheus pod.

Terminal access

Click on Terminal to get access directly to the K8s cluster.

Pod metrics, SSH to the pod, and container logs

Scaling

 

Note: In a production environment, it is always a best practice to apply configuration changes to your K8s cluster objects through a version control system.

You can also see the Service Accounts, Roles, Role Bindings, and PSPs under the Access Control tab. For more details see https://docs.k8slens.dev/main/.

-Octant-

https://vineethac.blogspot.com/2020/08/visualize-your-kubernetes-clusters-and.html

-Prometheus and Grafana-

https://vineethac.blogspot.com/2020/09/monitoring-tanzu-kubernetes-cluster.html

-vROps and Kubernetes Management Pack-

https://blogs.vmware.com/management/2020/12/announcing-the-vrealize-operations-management-pack-for-kubernetes-1-5-1.html

https://rudimartinsen.com/2021/03/07/vrops-kubernetes-mgmt-pack/

https://www.brockpeterson.com/post/vrops-management-pack-for-kubernetes

-Kubebox-

curl -Lo kubebox https://github.com/astefanutti/kubebox/releases/download/v0.9.0/kubebox-linux && chmod +x kubebox

Select namespace

Select Pod

This will show the selected pod metrics and logs.

Note: Kubebox relies on cAdvisor to retrieve the resource usage metrics. It’s recommended to use the provided cadvisor.yaml file, that’s tested to work with Kubebox. 

kubectl apply -f https://raw.github.com/astefanutti/kubebox/master/cadvisor.yaml

Kubebox: https://github.com/astefanutti/kubebox

Hope it was useful. Cheers!