Documentation forSolarWinds Observability

Add a Kubernetes cluster

To monitor your Kubernetes cluster and associated services with SolarWinds Observability, ensure your Kubernetes environment is set up and supported by SolarWinds Observability. See Getting started with Kubernetes and system requirements for details.

If you already have a Kubernetes entity created and need to upgrade your collector, see Upgrade Kubernetes monitoring.

The wizard in the Add Data dialog walks you through this process from start to finish, providing you with the exact commands to run on the cluster. If preferred, you can instead follow specific instructions to manually deploy the collector without using the Add Data dialog.

See Entities in SolarWinds Observability for an overview of Kubernetes entities and how they work in SolarWinds Observability.

Monitor a cluster using the wizard

  1. In SolarWinds Observability, click Add Data at the top.
  2. In the Add Data dialog, click Kubernetes.

  3. Enter the Kubernetes namespace in the provided field. The Kubernetes namespace is where the SWO K8s Collector will be deployed. See SWO K8s Collector for more information.

  4. Click the Deploy Agent toggle to enable or disable the SolarWinds Observability Agent.

    When enabled, the SolarWinds Observability Agent is included in the deployed helm chart, making cluster services available for monitoring integrations. To enable an integration associated with a Kubernetes cluster, see Configure Kubernetes cluster integration.

  5. Click Next.

  6. Create or select an API ingestion token to use when sending your collected Kubernetes cluster data by doing either of the following:

    • Select Generate New Token and enter an Ingestion Token Name, and then click Next.
    • Select Use Existing Token and select an ingestion token from the list, and then click Next.
  7. Run the provided command within the kubectl command line tool to create a new namespace.
  8. Run the provided command within the kubectl command line tool to create a secret. See Managing Secrets using kubectl.
  9. Create a file named values.yaml to save the provided configuration content. For advanced setup options, see all the configuration options in the sample values.yaml.
  10. Run the provided command to deploy the helm chart to your environment. Click Next.
  11. Wait for the Kubernetes cluster and metrics to generate, or click Skip Verification. You can now view your Kubernetes clusters in the Entity Explorer.
  12. To view data collected for the newly configured entity in the Entity Explorer, click the name of the Kubernetes in the confirmation dialog in the lower-left corner. It may take a few seconds for data to appear for the newly created entity. See Entity Explorer for details.

Monitor a cluster manually

  1. Copy or create an API token (Ingestion type), found in the settings area of SolarWinds Observability. See API Tokens for details.
  2. Create a namespace where the SWO K8s Collector will be deployed.

    kubectl create namespace <YourK8sNamespace>
  3. Create a kubectl secret with the following command, replacing <YourK8sNamespace> with the namespace of your Kubernetes cluster and <YourApiToken> with the API token from the previous step.

    kubectl create secret generic solarwinds-api-token -n <YourK8sNamespace> --from-literal=SOLARWINDS_API_TOKEN=<YourApiToken>
  4. Create a values.yaml file with the required configuration. You can also deploy the SWO K8s Collector with advanced configuration options, see the available configuration options in the sample values.yaml.

    Required configuration. Create your values.yaml file with the following helm values, replacing:

    • <YourOTelEndpoint> with your organization's OTel endpoint
    • <YourUniqueId> with a unique ID that follows the following format: xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx
    • <YourClusterName> with the display name for the cluster entity in SolarWinds Observability
    • To enable the SolarWinds Observability Agent for a Kubernetes cluster integration, add the following helm values:

      swoagent:
      enabled: true

    otel:
      endpoint: <YourOTelEndpoint>:443
    cluster:
      name: <YourClusterName>
      uid: <YourUniqueId>
    swoagent:
      enabled: true/false
  5. Deploy the helm chart with the values.yaml file with the following command, replacing <YourK8sNamespace> with the namespace of your Kubernetes cluster.

    helm repo add solarwinds https://helm.solarwinds.com && helm install -f values.yaml swo-k8s-collector solarwinds/swo-k8s-collector --namespace <YourK8sNamespace> --atomic
  6. Once collected K8s data is sent to SolarWinds Observability, Kubernetes cluster and Kubernetes node entities are created and available in the Entity Explorer and Kubernetes Overview.