The VictoriaLogs single Helm chart deploys VictoriaLogs database in Kubernetes. It optionally includes log collector for automatic collection of logs from Kubernetes containers and forwarding them to the deployed VictoriaLogs database.
Prerequisites #
Before installing this chart, ensure your environment meets the following requirements:
- Kubernetes cluster - A running Kubernetes cluster with sufficient resources
- Helm - Helm package manager installed and configured
Additional requirements depend on your configuration:
- Persistent storage - Required if you enable persistent volumes for data retention (enabled by default)
- kubectl - Needed for cluster management and troubleshooting
For installation instructions, refer to the official documentation:
Chart Details #
VictoriaLogs #
The chart deploys VictoriaLogs database in StatefulSet mode.
The chart provides the following configuration options:
- Persistent volume size for storing the ingested logs. See
server.persistentVolume.size
config option at the minimal configuration example . - Data retention (how long to keep logs in the database). It can be configurated via time-based retention (with units of days, weeks, or years)
or via disk space-based retention limits. See
server.retentionPeriod
andserver.retentionDiskSpaceUsage
config options in the minimal configuration example . See retention docs for details. - Ability to enable automatic collecting all the logs from all the containers in Kubernetes and sending them to the deployed VictoriaLogs database.
See
vector.enabled
option at the minimal configuration example .
Minimal Configuration #
You can install the chart right away without any configuration (see how to install ), but here is the minimal configuration that is commonly customized:
# VictoriaLogs server
server:
# Time-based retention
retentionPeriod: 7d
# Or disk-based retention
# retentionDiskSpaceUsage: 5GB
# Storage size for the ingested logs
persistentVolume:
size: 20Gi
# Log collector (disabled by default, needs to be enabled).
#
# If enabled, it collects all the logs from all the containers in Kubernetes
# and sends them to the deployed VictoriaLogs database.
vector:
enabled: true
The beauty of this chart is that with just vector.enabled: true
, you get automatic collection all the logs
across all the Kubernetes containers, enriching them with Kubernetes-specific log fields (the names for these log fields start with kubernetes.
prefix)
and storing them into the deployed VictoriaLogs database.
Sending logs to external VictoriaLogs databases #
This chart provides an option to run logs’ collection only and to send logs to external VictoriaLogs databases. This can be done with the following configs:
# Disable the VictoriaLogs database
server:
enabled: false
# Enable log collection from all the containers in Kubernetes
vector:
enabled: true
customConfig:
# Configure sending the collected logs to external VictoriaLogs databases
sinks:
vlogs:
type: elasticsearch
inputs: [parser]
mode: bulk
api_version: v8
compression: gzip
healthcheck:
enabled: false
# Specify your external VictoriaLogs endpoints. They must end with /insert/elasticsearch
# The collected logs are sent (replicated) to all the configured endpoints.
endpoints:
- "https://external-vlogs.example.com/insert/elasticsearch"
- "https://backup-vlogs.example.com/insert/elasticsearch"
request:
headers:
VL-Time-Field: timestamp
VL-Stream-Fields: stream,kubernetes.pod_name,kubernetes.container_name,kubernetes.pod_namespace
VL-Msg-Field: message
How to install #
Access a Kubernetes cluster.
Setup chart repository (can be omitted for OCI repositories) #
Add a chart helm repository with follow commands:
helm repo add vm https://victoriametrics.github.io/helm-charts/
helm repo update
List versions of vm/victoria-logs-single
chart available to installation:
helm search repo vm/victoria-logs-single -l
Install victoria-logs-single
chart
#
Export default values of victoria-logs-single
chart to file values.yaml
:
For HTTPS repository
helm show values vm/victoria-logs-single > values.yaml
For OCI repository
helm show values oci://ghcr.io/victoriametrics/helm-charts/victoria-logs-single > values.yaml
Change the values according to the need of the environment in values.yaml
file.
Consider setting .Values.nameOverride
to a small value like vls
to avoid hitting resource name limits of 63 characters
Test the installation with command:
For HTTPS repository
helm install vls vm/victoria-logs-single -f values.yaml -n NAMESPACE --debug
For OCI repository
helm install vls oci://ghcr.io/victoriametrics/helm-charts/victoria-logs-single -f values.yaml -n NAMESPACE --debug
Install chart with command:
For HTTPS repository
helm install vls vm/victoria-logs-single -f values.yaml -n NAMESPACE
For OCI repository
helm install vls oci://ghcr.io/victoriametrics/helm-charts/victoria-logs-single -f values.yaml -n NAMESPACE
Get the pods lists by running this commands:
kubectl get pods -A | grep 'vls'
Get the application by running this command:
helm list -f vls -n NAMESPACE
See the history of versions of vls
application with command.
helm history vls -n NAMESPACE
How to uninstall #
Remove application with command.
helm uninstall vls -n NAMESPACE
Documentation of Helm Chart #
Install helm-docs
following the instructions on this
tutorial
.
Generate docs with helm-docs
command.
cd charts/victoria-logs-single
helm-docs
The markdown generation is entirely go template driven. The tool parses metadata from charts and generates a number of sub-templates that can be referenced in a template file (by default README.md.gotmpl
). If no template file is provided, the tool has a default internal template that will generate a reasonably formatted README.
Parameters #
The following tables lists the configurable parameters of the chart and their default values.
Change the values according to the need of the environment in victoria-logs-single/values.yaml
file.
Key | Description |
---|---|
| (object) Dashboard annotations |
| (bool) Create VictoriaLogs dashboards |
| (bool) |
| (bool) |
| (string) |
| (object) Dashboard labels |
| (string) Override default namespace, where to create dashboards |
| (list) Add extra specs dynamically to this chart |
| (string) K8s cluster domain suffix, uses for building storage pods’ FQDN. Details are here |
| (object) Openshift security context compatibility configuration |
| (string) Image registry, that can be shared across multiple helm charts |
| (list) Image pull secrets, that can be shared across multiple helm charts |
| (string) Override chart name |
| (object) See |
| (object) PodDisruptionBudget extra labels |
| (bool) Print chart notes |
| (object) Pod affinity |
| (string) Container workdir |
| (object) K8s Deployment specific variables |
| (object) |
| (bool) Enable deployment of server component. Deployed as StatefulSet |
| (list) Additional environment variables (ex.: secret tokens, flags). Details are here |
| (list) Specify alternative source for env variables |
| (object) Extra command line arguments for container of component |
| (list) Extra containers to run in a pod with Victoria Logs container |
| (list) Additional hostPath mounts |
| (object) StatefulSet/Deployment additional labels |
| (list) Extra Volume Mounts for the container |
| (list) Extra Volumes for the pod |
| (string) Overrides the full name of server component |
| (string) Image pull policy |
| (string) Image registry |
| (string) Image repository |
| (string) Image tag |
| (string) Image tag suffix, which is appended to |
| (list) Image pull secrets |
| (string) Ingress annotations |
| (bool) Enable deployment of ingress for server component |
| (object) Ingress extra labels |
| (list) Array of host objects |
| (string) Ingress controller class name |
| (string) Ingress path type |
| (list) Array of TLS objects |
| (list) Init containers for Victoria Logs Pod |
| (object) Specify pod lifecycle |
| (string) VictoriaLogs mode: deployment, statefulSet |
| (object) Pod’s node selector. Details are here |
| (list) Array of access modes. Must match those of existing PV or dynamic provisioner. Details are here |
| (object) Persistent volume annotations |
| (bool) Create/use Persistent Volume Claim for server component. Use empty dir if set to false |
| (string) Existing Claim name. If defined, PVC must be created manually before volume will be bound |
| (object) Bind Persistent Volume by labels. Must match all labels of targeted PV. |
| (string) Mount path. Server data Persistent Volume mount root path. |
| (string) Override Persistent Volume Claim name |
| (string) Size of the volume. Should be calculated based on the logs you send and retention policy you set. |
| (string) StorageClass to use for persistent volume. Requires server.persistentVolume.enabled: true. If defined, PVC created automatically |
| (string) Mount subpath |
| (object) Pod’s annotations |
| (object) Pod’s additional labels |
| (object) Pod’s security context. Details are here |
| (string) Name of Priority Class |
| (object) Indicates whether the Container is running. If the liveness probe fails, the kubelet kills the Container, and the Container is subjected to its restart policy. If a Container does not provide a liveness probe, the default state is Success. |
| (object) Indicates whether the Container is ready to service requests. If the readiness probe fails, the endpoints controller removes the Pod’s IP address from the endpoints of all Services that match the Pod. The default state of readiness before the initial delay is Failure. If a Container does not provide a readiness probe, the default state is Success. |
| (object) Indicates whether the Container is done with potentially costly initialization. If set it is executed first. If it fails Container is restarted. If it succeeds liveness and readiness probes takes over. |
| (int) Replica count |
| (object) Resource object. Details are here |
| (string) Data retention max capacity. Default unit is GiB. See these docs |
| (int) Data retention period. Possible units character: h(ours), d(ays), w(eeks), y(ears), if no unit character specified - month. The minimum retention period is 24h. See these docs |
| (string) Use an alternate scheduler, e.g. “stork”. Check details here |
| (object) Security context to be added to server pods |
| (object) Service annotations |
| (string) Service ClusterIP |
| (list) Service external IPs. Details are here |
| (string) Service external traffic policy. Check here for details |
| (list) Extra service ports |
| (string) Health check node port for a service. Check here for details |
| (list) List of service IP families. Check here for details. |
| (string) Service IP family policy. Check here for details. |
| (object) Service labels |
| (string) Service load balancer IP |
| (list) Load balancer source range |
| (int) Service port |
| (string) Target port |
| (string) Service type |
| (object) Service Monitor annotations |
| (object) Basic auth params for Service Monitor |
| (bool) Enable deployment of Service Monitor for server component. This is Prometheus operator object |
| (object) Service Monitor labels |
| (list) Service Monitor metricRelabelings |
| (list) Service Monitor relabelings |
| (string) Service Monitor target port |
| (object) K8s StatefulSet specific variables |
| (string) Deploy order policy for StatefulSet pods |
| (object) StatefulSet update strategy. Check here for details. |
| (int) Pod’s termination grace period in seconds |
| (list) Node tolerations for server scheduling to nodes with taints. Details are here |
| (list) Pod topologySpreadConstraints |
| (object) |
| (bool) Enable deployment of VMServiceScrape for server component. This is Victoria Metrics operator object |
| (object) |
| (list) |
| (list) Commented. TLS configuration to use when scraping the endpoint tlsConfig: insecureSkipVerify: true |
| (string) target port |
| (object) ServiceAccount annotations |
| (bool) Mount API token to pod directly |
| (bool) Create service account. |
| (object) ServiceAccount labels |
| (string) The name of the service account to use. If not set and create is true, a name is generated using the fullname template |