Netdata Helm chart for Kubernetes deployments

Based on the work of varyumin (https://github.com/varyumin/netdata).

Introduction

This chart bootstraps a Netdata deployment on a Kubernetes cluster using the Helm package manager.

By default, the chart installs:

• A Netdata child pod on each node of a cluster, using a Daemonset
• A Netdata k8s state monitoring pod on one node, using a Deployment. This virtual node is called netdata-k8s-state.
• A Netdata parent pod on one node, using a Deployment. This virtual node is called netdata-parent.

Disabled by default:

• A Netdata restarter CronJob. Its main purpose is to automatically update Netdata when using nightly releases.

The child pods and the state pod function as headless collectors that collect and forward all the metrics to the parent pod. The parent pod uses persistent volumes to store metrics and alarms, handle alarm notifications, and provide the Netdata UI to view metrics using an ingress controller.

Please validate that the settings are suitable for your cluster before using them in production.

Prerequisites

• A working cluster running Kubernetes v1.9 or newer.
• The kubectl command line tool, within one minor version difference of your cluster, on an administrative system.
• The Helm package manager v3.8.0 or newer on the same administrative system.

Installing the Helm chart

You can install the Helm chart via our Helm repository, or by cloning this repository.

Installing via our Helm repository (recommended)

To use Netdata's Helm repository, run the following commands:

helm repo add netdata https://netdata.github.io/helmchart/
helm install netdata netdata/netdata

See our install Netdata on Kubernetes documentation for detailed installation and configuration instructions. The remainder of this document assumes you installed the Helm chart by cloning this repository, and thus uses slightly different helm install/helm upgrade commands.

Install by cloning the repository

Clone the repository locally.

git clone https://github.com/netdata/helmchart.git netdata-helmchart

To install the chart with the release name netdata:

helm install netdata ./netdata-helmchart/charts/netdata

The command deploys ingress on the Kubernetes cluster in the default configuration. The configuration section lists the parameters that can be configured during installation.

Tip: List all releases using helm list.

Once the Netdata deployment is up and running, read our guide, Monitor a Kubernetes (k8s) cluster with Netdata, for a breakdown of all the collectors, metrics, and charts available for health monitoring and performance troubleshooting.

Uninstalling the Chart

To uninstall/delete the my-release deployment:

 helm delete netdata

The command removes all the Kubernetes components associated with the chart and deletes the release.

Configuration

The following table lists the configurable parameters of the netdata chart and their default values.

Example to set the parameters from the command line:

$ helm install ./netdata --name my-release \
    --set notifications.slack.webhook_url=MySlackAPIURL \
    --set notifications.slack.recipient="@MyUser MyChannel"

Another example, to set a different ingress controller.

By default kubernetes.io/ingress.class set to use nginx as an ingress controller, but you can set Traefik as your ingress controller by setting ingress.annotations.

$ helm install ./netdata --name my-release \
    --set ingress.annotations=kubernetes.io/ingress.class: traefik

Alternatively to passing each variable in the command line, a YAML file that specifies the values for the parameters can be provided while installing the chart. For example,

$ helm install ./netdata --name my-release -f values.yaml

Tip: You can use the default values.yaml

Note:: To opt out of anonymous statistics, set the DO_NOT_TRACK environment variable to non-zero or non-empty value in parent.env / child.env configuration (e.g: DO_NOT_TRACK: 1) or uncomment the line in values.yml.

Configuration files

To deploy additional netdata user configuration files, you will need to add similar entries to either the parent.configs or the child.configs arrays. Regardless of whether you add config files that reside directly under /etc/netdata or in a subdirectory such as /etc/netdata/go.d, you can use the already provided configurations as reference. For reference, the parent.configs the array includes an example alarm that would get triggered if the python.d example module was enabled. Whenever you pass the sensitive data to your configuration like the database credential you can take an option to put it into the Kubernetes Secret by specifying storedType: secret in the selected configuration. Default all the configuration will be placed in the Kubernetes configmap.

Note that with the default configuration of this chart, the parent does the health checks and triggers alarms, but does not collect much data. As a result, the only other configuration files that might make sense to add to the parent are the alarm and alarm template definitions, under /etc/netdata/health.d.

Tip: Do pay attention to the indentation of the config file contents, as it matters for the parsing of the yaml file. Note that the first line under var: | must be indented with two more spaces relative to the preceding line:

  data: |-
    config line 1 #Need those two spaces
        config line 2 #No problem indenting more here

Persistent volumes

There are two different persistent volumes on parent node by design (not counting any Configmap/Secret mounts). Both can be used, but they don't have to be. Keep in mind that whenever persistent volumes for parent are not used, all the data for specific PV is lost in case of pod removal.

1. database (/var/cache/netdata) - all metrics data is stored here. Performance of this volume affects query timings.
2. alarms (/var/lib/netdata) - alarm log, if not persistent pod recreation will result in parent appearing as a new node in netdata.cloud (due to ./registry/ and ./cloud.d/ being removed).

In case of child instance it is a bit simpler. By default, hostPath: /var/lib/netdata-k8s-child is mounted on child in: /var/lib/netdata. You can disable it but this option is pretty much required in a real life scenario, as without it each pod deletion will result in new replication node for a parent.

Service discovery and supported services

Netdata's service discovery, which is installed as part of the Helm chart installation, finds what services are running on a cluster's pods, converts that into configuration files, and exports them, so they can be monitored.

Applications

Service discovery currently supports the following applications via their associated collector:

• ActiveMQ
• Apache
• Bind
• CockroachDB
• Consul
• CoreDNS
• Elasticsearch
• Fluentd
• FreeRADIUS
• HDFS
• Lighttpd
• Logstash
• MySQL
• NGINX
• OpenVPN
• PHP-FPM
• RabbitMQ
• Solr
• Tengine
• Unbound
• VerneMQ
• ZooKeeper

Prometheus endpoints

Service discovery supports Prometheus endpoints via the Prometheus collector.

Annotations on pods allow a fine control of the scraping process:

• prometheus.io/scrape: The default configuration will scrape all pods and, if set to false, this annotation excludes the pod from the scraping process.
• prometheus.io/path: If the metrics path is not /metrics, define it with this annotation.
• prometheus.io/port: Scrape the pod on the indicated port instead of the pod’s declared ports.

Configure service discovery

If your cluster runs services on non-default ports or uses non-default names, you may need to configure service discovery to start collecting metrics from your services. You have to edit the default ConfigMap that is shipped with the Helmchart and deploy that to your cluster.

First, copy netdata-helmchart/sdconfig/child.yml to a new location outside the netdata-helmchart directory. The destination can be anywhere you like, but the following examples assume it resides next to the netdata-helmchart directory.

cp netdata-helmchart/sdconfig/child.yml .

Edit the new child.yml file according to your needs. See the Helm chart configuration and the file itself for details. You can then run helm install/helm upgrade with the --set-file argument to use your configured child.yml file instead of the default, changing the path if you copied it elsewhere.

helm install --set-file sd.child.configmap.from.value=./child.yml netdata ./netdata-helmchart/charts/netdata
helm upgrade --set-file sd.child.configmap.from.value=./child.yml netdata ./netdata-helmchart/charts/netdata

Now that you pushed an edited ConfigMap to your cluster, service discovery should find and set up metrics collection from your non-default service.

Custom pod labels and annotations

Occasionally, you will want to add specific labels and annotations to the parent and/or child pods. You might want to do this to tell other applications on the cluster how to treat your pods, or simply to categorize applications on your cluster. You can label and annotate the parent and child pods by using the podLabels and podAnnotations dictionaries under the parent and child objects, respectively.

For example, suppose you're installing Netdata on all your database nodes, and you'd like the child pods to be labeled with workload: database so that you're able to recognize this.

At the same time, say you've configured chaoskube to kill all pods annotated with chaoskube.io/enabled: true, and you'd like chaoskube to be enabled for the parent pod but not the childs.

You would do this by installing as:

$ helm install \
  --set child.podLabels.workload=database \
  --set 'child.podAnnotations.chaoskube\.io/enabled=false' \
  --set 'parent.podAnnotations.chaoskube\.io/enabled=true' \
  netdata ./netdata-helmchart/charts/netdata

Contributing

If you want to contribute, we are humbled!

• Take a look at our Contributing Guidelines.
• This repository is under the Netdata Code Of Conduct.
• Chat about your contribution and let us help you in our forum!