Kubernetes and OpenObserve Integration

Input and output integration overview

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

This configuration pairs Telegraf’s HTTP output with OpenObserve’s native JSON ingestion API, turning any Telegraf agent into a first-class OpenObserve collector.

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.

OpenObserve

OpenObserve is an open source observability platform written in Rust that stores data cost-effectively on object storage or local disk. It exposes REST endpoints such as /api/{org}/ingest/metrics/_json that accept batched metric documents conforming to a concise JSON schema, making it an attractive drop-in replacement for Loki or Elasticsearch stacks. The Telegraf HTTP output plugin streams metrics to arbitrary HTTP targets; when the "data_format = "json"" serializer is selected, Telegraf batches its metric objects into a payload that matches OpenObserve’s ingestion contract. The plugin supports configurable batch size, custom headers, TLS, and compression, allowing operators to authenticate with Basic or Bearer tokens and to enforce back-pressure without additional collectors. By reusing existing Telegraf agents already collecting system, application, or SNMP data, organizations can funnel rich telemetry into OpenObserve dashboards and SQL-like analytics with minimal overhead, enabling unified observability, long-term retention, and real-time alerting without vendor lock-in.

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

OpenObserve

[[outputs.http]]
  ## OpenObserve JSON metrics ingestion endpoint
  url = "https://api.openobserve.ai/api/default/ingest/metrics/_json"

  ## Use POST to push batches
  method = "POST"

  ## Basic auth header (base64 encoded "username:password")
  headers = { Authorization = "Basic dXNlcjpwYXNzd29yZA==" }

  ## Timeout for HTTP requests
  timeout = "10s"

  ## Override Content-Type to match OpenObserve expectation
  content_type = "application/json"

  ## Force Telegraf to batch and serialize metrics as JSON
  data_format = "json"

  ## JSON serializer specific options
  json_timestamp_units = "1ms"

  ## Uncomment to restrict batch size
  # batch_size = 5000

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.

OpenObserve

1. Edge Device Health Mirror: Deploy Telegraf on thousands of industrial IoT devices to capture temperature, vibration, and power metrics, then use this output to push JSON batches to OpenObserve. Plant operators gain a real-time overview of machine health and can trigger maintenance based on anomalies without relying on heavyweight collectors.

2. Blue-Green Deployment Canary: Attach a lightweight Telegraf sidecar to each Kubernetes release-candidate pod that scrapes /metrics and forwards container stats to a dedicated “canary” stream in OpenObserve. Continuous comparison of error rates between blue and green versions empowers the CI pipeline to auto-roll back poor performers within seconds.

3. Multi-Tenant SaaS Billing Pipeline: Emit per-customer usage counters via Telegraf and tag them with tenant_id; the HTTP plugin posts them to OpenObserve where SQL reports aggregate usage into invoices, eliminating separate metering services and simplifying compliance audits.

4. Security Threat Scoring: Fuse Suricata events and host resource metrics in Telegraf, deliver them to OpenObserve’s analytics engine, and run stream-processing rules that correlate spikes in suspicious traffic with CPU saturation to produce an actionable threat score and automatically open tickets in a SOAR platform.

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.