victoriametrics.com

Kubernetes monitoring via VictoriaMetrics Single #

This guide covers:

Precondition

We will use:

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

VictoriaMetrics Single on Kubernetes cluster

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:

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

Update Helm repositories:

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              helm repo update

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

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              helm search repo vm/

The expected output is:

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              NAME                           	CHART VERSION	APP VERSION	DESCRIPTION                                       
vm/victoria-logs-single        	0.9.3        	v1.16.0    	Victoria Logs Single version - high-performance...
vm/victoria-metrics-agent      	0.17.2       	v1.113.0   	Victoria Metrics Agent - collects metrics from ...
vm/victoria-metrics-alert      	0.15.0       	v1.113.0   	Victoria Metrics Alert - executes a list of giv...
vm/victoria-metrics-anomaly    	1.9.0        	v1.21.0    	Victoria Metrics Anomaly Detection - a service ...
vm/victoria-metrics-auth       	0.10.0       	v1.113.0   	Victoria Metrics Auth - is a simple auth proxy ...
vm/victoria-metrics-cluster    	0.19.2       	v1.113.0   	Victoria Metrics Cluster version - high-perform...
vm/victoria-metrics-common     	0.0.42       	           	Victoria Metrics Common - contains shared templ...
vm/victoria-metrics-distributed	0.9.0        	v1.113.0   	A Helm chart for Running VMCluster on Multiple ...
vm/victoria-metrics-gateway    	0.8.0        	v1.113.0   	Victoria Metrics Gateway - Auth & Rate-Limittin...
vm/victoria-metrics-k8s-stack  	0.39.0       	v1.113.0   	Kubernetes monitoring on VictoriaMetrics stack....
vm/victoria-metrics-operator   	0.43.0       	v0.54.1    	Victoria Metrics Operator                         
vm/victoria-metrics-single     	0.15.1       	v1.113.0   	Victoria Metrics Single version - high-performa...

2. Install VictoriaMetrics Single from Helm Chart #

Run this command in your terminal:

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              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

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              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}'

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

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              NAME: vmsingle
LAST DEPLOYED: Fri Mar 21 11:50:39 2025
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=" -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/<protocol-specific-write-endpoint>

  All supported write endpoints can be found at https://docs.victoriametrics.com/single-server-victoriametrics/#how-to-import-time-series-data

  E.g: for Prometheus:
    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:

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              kubectl get pods

The expected output is:

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              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.

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              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:

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              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:

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

Expose Grafana service on 127.0.0.1:3000:

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              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.

single dashboards

You will see something like this:

k8s dashboards

VictoriaMetrics dashboard also available to use:

single

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.

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