vSphere with Tanzu using NSX-T - Part35 - Monitoring supervisor cluster health with Python and vCenter APIs

vSphere with Tanzu Supervisor cluster is a Kubernetes platform that simplifies the deployment, management, and scaling of Kubernetes clusters. Monitoring the health of your WCP/ Supervisor clusters is crucial to ensure the smooth running of your Tanzu Kubernetes Clusters (TKCs) and applications. In this blog post, we'll explore how to use Python and vCenter APIs to verify the health of your Supervisor clusters.

You can access the Python script from my GitHub repository: https://github.com/vineethac/VMware/tree/main/vSphere_with_Tanzu/wcp_cluster_health

This script connects to the vCenter server, retrieves the cluster summary, and checks the Tanzu Supervisor cluster configuration info and prints the status of the cluster. By using this Python script, you can easily monitor the health of your Tanzu Supervisor clusters through vCenter APIs.

Hope it was useful. Cheers!

Kubernetes mini project

In this mini project, we are going to learn the following:

• Deploy a simple Python based web application on a Kubernetes cluster.
• We will use Helm to deploy this app.
• This web app uses FastAPI and exposes some metrics using the Prometheus Python client.
• To store and visualize these metrics we will deploy Prometheus and Grafana in the K8s cluster.
• We will also deploy and use an ingress controller for exposing the web app, Prometheus, and Grafana to external users.
• For logging we will deploy and use Grafana Loki stack.
  
  

Full project in my GitHub

https://github.com/vineethac/Kubernetes/tree/main/mini-project
 

High-level steps to complete this project

Step1: Write the Python app.

Step2: Create the Dockerfile for the app.

Step3: Create the container image.

Step4: Push the container image to an image registry like Docker Hub.

Step5: Get access to a K8s cluster.

Step6: Deploy an ingress controller.

Step7: Create the Helm chart for your app and deploy it to the K8s cluster.

Step8: Deploy Prometheus stack on the K8s cluster using Helm.

Step9: Create a servicemonitor resource which defines the target to be monitored by Prometheus.

Step10: Verify targets and service discovery in Prometheus.

Step11: Configure Grafana dashboard and verify.

Step12. Deploy Grafana Loki stack using Helm.

Hope it was useful. Cheers!

Configure syslog forwarding in vCenter servers using Python

As a system administrator, it's essential to ensure that your vCenter servers are properly configured to collect and forward system logs to a central location for monitoring and analysis. In this blog, we'll explore how to configure syslog forwarding in vCenter servers using Python.

You can access the Python script from my GitHub repository: 
https://github.com/vineethac/VMware/tree/main/vCenter/syslog_forwarding

In this blog, we've demonstrated how to get, test, and set syslog forwarding configuration in vCenter servers using Python. By following these steps, you can ensure that your vCenter servers are properly configured to collect and forward system logs to a central location for monitoring and analysis. Remember to replace the placeholders in the config file with your actual vCenter server names, syslog server IP address or hostname, port, and protocol.

Hope it was useful. Cheers!

Kubernetes 101 - Part11 - Find Kubernetes nodes with DiskPressure

Following are two quick and easy ways to find Kubernetes nodes with disk pressure:

jq:

kubectl get nodes -o json | jq -r '.items[] | select(.status.conditions[].reason=="KubeletHasDiskPressure") | .metadata.name'

jsonpath:

kubectl get nodes -o jsonpath='{range .items[*]} {.metadata.name} {" "} {.status.conditions[?(@.type=="DiskPressure")].status} {" "} {"\n"}'

❯ kubectl get no
NAME                                 STATUS   ROLES                  AGE     VERSION
tkc-btvsm-72hz2                      Ready    control-plane,master   124d    v1.23.8+vmware.3
tkc-btvsm-79xtn                      Ready    control-plane,master   124d    v1.23.8+vmware.3
tkc-btvsm-klmjz                      Ready    control-plane,master   124d    v1.23.8+vmware.3
tkc-workers-2cmvm-5bfcc5c9cd-gmv6m   Ready    <none>                 5d17h   v1.23.8+vmware.3
tkc-workers-2cmvm-5bfcc5c9cd-m44sq   Ready    <none>                 5d17h   v1.23.8+vmware.3
tkc-workers-2cmvm-5bfcc5c9cd-mjjlk   Ready    <none>                 5d17h   v1.23.8+vmware.3
tkc-workers-2cmvm-5bfcc5c9cd-wflrl   Ready    <none>                 5d17h   v1.23.8+vmware.3
tkc-workers-2cmvm-5bfcc5c9cd-xnqvk   Ready    <none>                 5d17h   v1.23.8+vmware.3
❯
❯
❯ kubectl get nodes -o json | jq -r '.items[] | select(.status.conditions[].reason=="KubeletHasDiskPressure") | .metadata.name'
tkc-workers-2cmvm-5bfcc5c9cd-m44sq
tkc-workers-2cmvm-5bfcc5c9cd-wflrl
❯
❯ kubectl get nodes -o jsonpath='{range .items[*]} {.metadata.name} {" "} {.status.conditions[?(@.type=="DiskPressure")].status} {" "} {"\n"}'
 tkc-btvsm-72hz2   False
 tkc-btvsm-79xtn   False
 tkc-btvsm-klmjz   False
 tkc-workers-2cmvm-5bfcc5c9cd-gmv6m   False
 tkc-workers-2cmvm-5bfcc5c9cd-m44sq   True
 tkc-workers-2cmvm-5bfcc5c9cd-mjjlk   False
 tkc-workers-2cmvm-5bfcc5c9cd-wflrl   True
 tkc-workers-2cmvm-5bfcc5c9cd-xnqvk   False
 %
❯

Hope it was useful. Cheers!

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!

Benchmarking Kubernetes infrastructure using K-Bench

K-Bench is a framework to benchmark the control and data plane aspects of a Kubernetes cluster. More details are available at https://github.com/vmware-tanzu/k-bench. In my case, I am going to conduct this benchmarking study on a Tanzu Kubernetes cluster which is provisioned using Tanzu Kubernetes Grid service on a vSphere 7 U1 cluster.

Step 1: Clone the K-Bench repo

git clone https://github.com/vmware-tanzu/k-bench.git

Step 2: Install

./install.sh

Once the installation is done it will say, "Completed k-bench installation.".

Step 3: Run the benchmark

./run.sh

If you don't specify any test, then it is going to conduct the default set of tests. All sets of tests are defined under the config directory. If you browse to the config directory and list, there are separate folders specific to each test. You can see folders starting with cp and dp, and it refers to control plane and data plane related tests.

If no specific test is mentioned, then it is going to run all that is defined in the default directory. You can also see details of the test and results in the logs. The directories starting with "results" will have log files corresponding to each test run.

Following is a sample log that shows a summary of pod creation throughput, pod creation average latency, pod startup total latency, list/ update/ delete pod latency, etc.

Now, if you want to run a specific test case, you can do it as follows:

Usage: ./run.sh -r <run-tag> [-t <comma-separated-tests> -o <output-dir>]

DP network internode test

For example, you can run a data plane test to check the network performance between two nodes as shown below.

./run.sh -r "kbench-run-on-tkg-cluster-02"  -t "dp_network_internode" -o "./"

As soon as you run the above command, two pods will be created inside "kbench-pod-namespace" on two worker nodes as you see below.

It will then start "iperf3" process inside those two pods to create a network load following a client-server model as per the actions defined in the config.json file.

Sample logs are given below. It shows details like the amount of data transferred, transfer rate, network latency, etc.

Once the test run is complete, the pods and other resources created will be automatically deleted. Similarly, you can select the other set of tests that are pre-defined in the framework. I believe you have the flexibility to define custom test cases too as per your requirements. I hope it was useful. Cheers!

Related posts

Storage performance benchmarking of Tanzu Kubernetes clusters
Monitoring Tanzu Kubernetes cluster using Prometheus and Grafana

References

Dell EMC PowerFlex MP for vROps 8.x - Part7 - Create custom reports

In March 2020, I published a blog on how to create custom views and reports in vROps 8.x. This article explains how to create a custom storage report for Dell EMC PowerFlex using the PowerFlex Management Pack for vROps 8.x. 

Sample PowerFlex Storage Report PDF and template is available in my GitHub repo for download. You can use it as a starting point/ modify it as per requirement.

To create a new view: Dashboards - Views - Add.

Provide a name and description for the new view. Here, for example, I will create a view that shows PowerFlex Protection Domain Info.

Select List.

Select Protection Domain as subject and group it by PowerFlex Rack/ Appliance System.

Double click or drag and drop the selected metrics or properties to include in the view. In the following screenshot, I selected 4 capacity metrics to include in the view.

You can also select and change the units and transformation as per requirements. Once it is done, click Save.

Now a view is created. Similarly, you can create multiple views for the different PowerFlex resource kinds. The next step is to include this view in an existing template or in a new template. 

To create a new report template: Dashboards - Reports - Add.

• Provide a name and description for the new report template.
• From the views and dashboards, find the PowerFlex Protection Domain Info view that we created earlier, double-click or drag and drop them to the right pane. You can add multiple views to be included in this report template.
• Select PDF and CSV.
• Select all the layout options if you like to and click Save.
• Now the custom report template is created. You can select it and click Run.

Select PowerFlex and then select PowerFlex World and click ok.

The report will run in the background and will be available to download under the "Generated Reports" tab. You can select it and download the PDF or CSV file. You can even configure a schedule to generate a report and email it or save it to a location automatically based on your requirements. Hope it was useful. Cheers!

Related posts

Part1: Install
Part2: Configure
Part3: Dashboards
Part4: Resource kinds and relationships
Part5: Collection interval
Part6: Create custom alerts

Dell EMC PowerFlex MP for vROps 8.x Blog Series

 

Image source: infohub.delltechnologies.com/section-assets/powerflex-vrops-infographics

Consolidating all my blogs on Dell EMC PowerFlex Management Pack for vROps 8.x.

Part1: Install
Part2: Configure
Part3: Dashboards
Part4: Resource kinds and relationships
Part5: Collection interval
Part6: Create custom alerts
Part7: Create custom reports

References

Dell EMC blog: https://infohub.delltechnologies.com/p/introducing-the-powerflex-management-pack-for-vrealize-operations/

Product guide: https://infohub.delltechnologies.com/section-assets/powerflexadapter-for-vrops-product-guide

VMware marketplace: https://marketplace.cloud.vmware.com/services/details/dell-emc-powerflex-management-pack-for-vrops?slug=true

Infographics: https://infohub.delltechnologies.com/section-assets/powerflex-vrops-infographics

Video: https://infohub.delltechnologies.com/l/videos-44/powerflex-management-pack-for-vrealize-operations-1

Dell EMC PowerFlex MP for vROps 8.x - Part6 - Create custom alerts

In this post, we will take a look at creating custom alerts for PowerFlex by adding symptom definitions and alert definitions. Refer to my previous blog post to understand more about the alerting aspects in vROps. Here we will take an example scenario and see how we can create custom symptom definitions and alert definitions.

Scenario

The user is running some latency-sensitive business-critical applications using PowerFlex storage. Below are the symptoms that he would like to define and alerts should be produced for the same and these should affect the "Health" badge of the PowerFlex volume object.

Step1: Add Symptom Definitions

Go to Alerts - Symptom Definitions - Click Add.

Select base object type: Expand PowerFlex Adapter - Select Volume.

• Select the metric User Data SDC Read Latency (ms): double click on it twice so that you can define both warning and critical symptoms.
• Select the metric User Data SDC Write Latency (ms): double click on it twice so that you can define both warning and critical symptoms.

Now, fill all the required fields as per the conditions we defined earlier.

Click Save. Now as you can see below the 4 symptom definitions are created.

Step2: Add Alert Definitions

Go to Alerts - Alert Definitions - Click Add.

• Provide alert name, select the base object type and advanced settings and click Next.

• Filter and search the symptoms that we created earlier. Drag and drop the two volume read latency related symptoms and select Any. Click Next.

• If you want to provide any recommendations you can add it in this step and click Next.
• Select vSphere Solution's Default Policy and click Next and click Create.

Similarly, you can create an alert definition for PowerFlex Volume Write Latency too.

Now, we are all done. Let's test the alerts! I am using FIO to generate IO load on one of the PowerFlex volume.

You can see the Read Latency for this volume is grater than 1 ms, and so a warning alert should be produced for this specific volume.

Hope it was useful. Cheers!

Related posts

Part1: Install
Part2: Configure
Part3: Dashboards
Part4: Resource kinds and relationships
Part5: Collection interval 

References

Product guide: https://infohub.delltechnologies.com/section-assets/powerflexadapter-for-vrops-product-guide

PowerFlex website: https://www.delltechnologies.com/PowerFlex

PowerFlex white papers and blog: https://infohub.delltechnologies.com/t/powerflex-14/