Install the Prometheus Operator using helm

install prometheus operator helm

2 min read | by Jordi Prats

Prometheus is an open-source systems monitoring and alerting toolkit that users a multi-dimensional data model with time series data identified by metric name and key/value pairs.

The Prometheus operator is a Kubernetes operator that simplifies the provision and management of Prometheus instances on Kubernetes. It provides easy management of Prometheus instances as native Kubernetes resources, and also includes a built-in service discovery mechanism to automatically discover and monitor Kubernetes services.

We can use helm to install the Prometheus operator as follows:

helm repo add prometheus-community https://prometheus-community.github.io/helm-charts
helm repo update
helm install prom-op prometheus-community/kube-prometheus-stack -n prometheus --create-namespace

By default, it will install an initial prometheus instance:

$ kubectl get pods
NAME                                                   READY   STATUS              RESTARTS   AGE
prom-op-grafana-7c5bcc4888-sw6rb                       0/3     ContainerCreating   0          19s
prom-op-kube-prometheus-st-operator-5c9cbd755b-4q4tb   0/1     ContainerCreating   0          20s
prom-op-kube-state-metrics-776db89f58-2p7mt            0/1     ContainerCreating   0          20s
prom-op-prometheus-node-exporter-wps64                 0/1     ContainerCreating   0          20s

To be able to reach this initial instance we can use kubectl port-forward to svc/prometheus-operator-prometheus-prometheus:

kubectl -n prometheus port-forward svc/prometheus-operator-prometheus-prometheus 9090

Once you have port-forwarded the Prometheus service, you can access the Prometheus UI by visiting http://localhost:9090 in your web browser.

The Prometheus operator also comes with preconfigured Grafana dashboards for visualizing metrics. You can access Grafana by port-forwarding the Grafana service using kubectl port-forward to svc/prom-op-grafana

kubectl -n prometheus port-forward svc/prom-op-grafana 3000

For grafana, you'll be able to reach it using http://localhost:3000.

Overall, the Prometheus operator is a powerful tool for monitoring your Kubernetes cluster and its applications. With its easy installation process and preconfigured dashboards, it's a great way to get started with monitoring very quickly.

Posted on 04/04/2023

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