HOWTO install Prometheus & Grafana on a single host with microk8s
I wanted to get Prometheus and Grafana up and running on a development machine but I didn't want to get bogged down by the specifics of how to run Kubernetes.
I found microk8s by Canonical and I was pleased to find out that it made things really simple to set up the entire k8s stack and Prometheus and Grafana on a single machine.
Getting Started
I did my setup on a fresh install of Ubuntu 20.04.1 LTS, but these instructions should work on any recent version of Ubuntu.
First, install the microk8s snap package
$ sudo snap install microk8s --classic
Then, you can list all of the add-ons that are shipped with microk8s.
$ microk8s.status
None of these are enabled by default. So to run Prometheus and Grafana, you will have to enable them.
$ microk8s.enable dashboard prometheus
That should install the Kubernetes dashboard as well as Prometheus & Grafana.
$ Optional Alias
The next step is completely optional, but it makes me type less so I'm going to do it:
$ sudo snap alias microk8s.kubectl kubectl
Most of the upcoming commands are going to be microk8s.kubectl commands, so the above alias allows us to just use kubectl instead of typing out the entire microk8s.kubectl command.
Accessing the Kubernetes Dashboard
To access the dashboard, you need to get your access token. To do so:
$ kubectl describe secret
Name: default-token-8vptq
Namespace: default
Labels: <none>
Annotations: kubernetes.io/service-account.name: default
kubernetes.io/service-account.uid: 4c6fbee3-beca-4ecb-9ea5-91a30c1b77dc
Type: kubernetes.io/service-account-token
Data
====
token: XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
With a fresh installation of Kubernetes, there should only be one secret: the default token.
You want to copy the token field into your clipboard.
Finally, you want open up a secure channel to the cluster:
$ kubectl proxy &
Finally, going to:
http://localhost:8001/api/v1/namespaces/kube-system/services/https:kubernetes-dashboard:/proxy/
Should give you access to the dashboard. Use the token in your clipboard to login!
If you're SSHed into a machine, then you need to port forward!
If you're going through this HOWTO on a remote host via SSH, you're going to need to forward the port via SSH like so:
$ ssh -L 8001:localhost:8001 hostname
Then the above link in your browser should work!
Exploring kubectl commands
Here are some commands to get you started exploring the Kubernetes CLI:
$ kubectl get services -n monitoring
NAME TYPE CLUSTER-IP EXTERNAL-IP PORT(S) AGE
prometheus-operator ClusterIP None <none> 8443/TCP 2d19h
alertmanager-main ClusterIP 10.152.183.141 <none> 9093/TCP 2d19h
grafana ClusterIP 10.152.183.237 <none> 3000/TCP 2d19h
kube-state-metrics ClusterIP None <none> 8443/TCP,9443/TCP 2d19h
node-exporter ClusterIP None <none> 9100/TCP 2d19h
prometheus-adapter ClusterIP 10.152.183.70 <none> 443/TCP 2d19h
prometheus-k8s ClusterIP 10.152.183.137 <none> 9090/TCP 2d19h
alertmanager-operated ClusterIP None <none> 9093/TCP,9094/TCP,9094/UDP 2d19h
prometheus-operated ClusterIP None <none> 9090/TCP 2d19h
$ kubectl get pods -n monitoring
NAME READY STATUS RESTARTS AGE
prometheus-adapter-557648f58c-z8jf5 1/1 Running 0 2d19h
prometheus-operator-5b7946f4d6-5jkbw 2/2 Running 0 2d19h
grafana-7c9bc466d8-r6b88 1/1 Running 0 2d19h
node-exporter-hnvfl 2/2 Running 0 2d19h
kube-state-metrics-66b65b78bc-mjj5q 3/3 Running 0 2d19h
alertmanager-main-0 2/2 Running 0 2d19h
prometheus-k8s-0 3/3 Running 1 2d19h
Accessing Prometheus
You need to port-forward to enable external access:
$ kubectl port-forward -n monitoring service/prometheus-k8s --address 0.0.0.0 9090:9090
Then you should be able to access the Prometheus UI on http://localhost:9090. No username/password is required.
Accessing Grafana
You need to port-forward to enable external access:
$ kubectl port-forward -n monitoring service/grafana --address 0.0.0.0 3000:3000
Then you should be able to access the Grafana UI on http://localhost:3000. The default credentials are:
username: admin
password: admin
Grafana should come pre-configured with Prometheus as a data source.