Kubernetes and CrateDB Integration

Input and output integration overview

This plugin captures metrics for Kubernetes pods and containers by communicating with the Kubelet API.

The CrateDB plugin facilitates the writing of metrics to a CrateDB database, leveraging its PostgreSQL-compatible protocol to ensure a seamless experience for users.

Integration details

Kubernetes

The Kubernetes input plugin interfaces with the Kubelet API to gather metrics for running pods and containers on a single host, ideally as part of a daemonset in a Kubernetes installation. By operating on each node within the cluster, it collects metrics from the locally running kubelet, ensuring that the data reflects the real-time state of the environment. Being a rapidly evolving project, Kubernetes sees frequent updates, and this plugin adheres to the major cloud providers’ supported versions, maintaining compatibility across multiple releases within a limited time span. Significant consideration is given to the potential high series cardinality, which can burden the database; thus, users are advised to implement filtering techniques and retention policies to manage this load effectively. Configuration options provide flexible customization of the plugin’s behavior to integrate seamlessly into different setups, enhancing its utility in monitoring Kubernetes environments.

CrateDB

This plugin writes to CrateDB via its PostgreSQL protocol, allowing for metrics to be efficiently stored in a scalable database. CrateDB is designed for high-speed analytics, supporting time-series data and complicated queries, making it ideal for applications that require fast ingestion and analysis of large datasets. By utilizing the PostgreSQL protocol, the CrateDB output plugin ensures compatibility with existing PostgreSQL client libraries and tools, enabling a smooth integration for users who are already familiar with PostgreSQL’s ecosystem. The plugin provides options such as automatic table creation, connection parameters, and query timeouts, offering flexibility in how metrics are handled and stored within the database.

Configuration

Kubernetes

[[inputs.kubernetes]]
  ## URL for the kubelet, if empty read metrics from all nodes in the cluster
  url = "http://127.0.0.1:10255"

  ## Use bearer token for authorization. ('bearer_token' takes priority)
  ## If both of these are empty, we'll use the default serviceaccount:
  ## at: /var/run/secrets/kubernetes.io/serviceaccount/token
  ##
  ## To re-read the token at each interval, please use a file with the
  ## bearer_token option. If given a string, Telegraf will always use that
  ## token.
  # bearer_token = "/var/run/secrets/kubernetes.io/serviceaccount/token"
  ## OR
  # bearer_token_string = "abc_123"

  ## Kubernetes Node Metric Name
  ## The default Kubernetes node metric name (i.e. kubernetes_node) is the same
  ## for the kubernetes and kube_inventory plugins. To avoid conflicts, set this
  ## option to a different value.
  # node_metric_name = "kubernetes_node"

  ## Pod labels to be added as tags.  An empty array for both include and
  ## exclude will include all labels.
  # label_include = []
  # label_exclude = ["*"]

  ## Set response_timeout (default 5 seconds)
  # response_timeout = "5s"

  ## Optional TLS Config
  # tls_ca = /path/to/cafile
  # tls_cert = /path/to/certfile
  # tls_key = /path/to/keyfile
  ## Use TLS but skip chain & host verification
  # insecure_skip_verify = false

CrateDB

[[outputs.cratedb]]
  ## Connection parameters for accessing the database see
  ##   https://pkg.go.dev/github.com/jackc/pgx/v4#ParseConfig
  ## for available options
  url = "postgres://user:password@localhost/schema?sslmode=disable"

  ## Timeout for all CrateDB queries.
  # timeout = "5s"

  ## Name of the table to store metrics in.
  # table = "metrics"

  ## If true, and the metrics table does not exist, create it automatically.
  # table_create = false

  ## The character(s) to replace any '.' in an object key with
  # key_separator = "_"

Input and output integration examples

Kubernetes

1. Dynamic Resource Allocation Monitoring: By utilizing the Kubernetes plugin, teams can set up alerts for resource usage patterns across various pods and containers. This proactive monitoring approach enables automatic scaling of resources in response to specific thresholds—helping to optimize performance while minimizing costs during peak usage.

2. Multi-tenancy Resource Isolation Analysis: Organizations using Kubernetes can leverage this plugin to track resource consumption per namespace. In a multi-tenant scenario, understanding the resource allocations and usages across different teams becomes critical for ensuring fair access and performance guarantees, leading to better resource management strategies.

3. Real-time Health Dashboards: Integrate the data captured by the Kubernetes plugin into visualization tools like Grafana to create real-time dashboards. These dashboards provide insights into the overall health and performance of the Kubernetes environment, allowing teams to quickly identify and rectify issues across clusters, pods, and containers.

4. Automated Incident Response Workflows: By combining the Kubernetes plugin with alert management systems, teams can automate incident response procedures based on real-time metrics. If a pod’s resource usage exceeds predefined limits, an automated workflow can trigger remediation actions, such as restarting the pod or reallocating resources—all of which can help improve system resilience.

CrateDB

1. Real-Time Analytics for IoT Devices: Collect and store metrics from thousands of IoT devices. By setting up a dynamic metrics table for each device, users can perform real-time analytics on the collected data, enabling quick insights into device performance, patterns, and potential failures. This setup benefits from CrateDB’s ability to handle high-throughput data ingestion while providing the necessary analytics capabilities to derive actionable insights.

2. Website Performance Monitoring: Track key performance metrics from web applications, such as request latency and user activity. By storing metrics in CrateDB, teams can leverage the power of SQL-like queries to analyze traffic patterns, user engagement, and server performance over time, leading to optimized application performance and enhanced user experiences.

3. Financial Transaction Analysis: Manage large volumes of financial transaction data for real-time fraud detection and analysis. With CrateDB’s scalable infrastructure, users can store, query, and analyze transaction metrics efficiently, allowing for the detection of anomalies and illicit activities based on transaction patterns and trends.

Feedback

Thank you for being part of our community! If you have any general feedback or found any bugs on these pages, we welcome and encourage your input. Please submit your feedback in the InfluxDB community Slack.