Documentation forSolarWinds Observability

Getting started with infrastructure monitoring: Kubernetes

SolarWinds Observability can monitor the following types of infrastructures: self-managed hosts, cloud platforms, and Kubernetes clusters. See Infrastructure monitoring. The guide for getting started with Kubernetes monitoring refers to monitoring a Kubernetes cluster and its nodes, and picks up right after you have accepted an invitation to join your organization in SolarWinds Observability and created your user account. See SolarWinds Observability Getting Started Guide.

Verify system compatibility.

Review the SolarWinds Observability System Requirements to ensure your environment is compatible for Kubernetes infrastructure monitoring. See Kubernetes requirements for Kubernetes clusters and verify your firewall settings allow communication with the SolarWinds Observability Agent endpoint for the SWO K8s Collector. See Data centers and endpoint URIs.

Add your Kubernetes entities to SolarWinds Observability.

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

  2. Enter your Prometheus URL and Kubernetes namespace in the fields provided.

  3. Select or create an ingestion API token, then copy and execute the provided command in the kubectl command line tool.

  4. Create a values.yaml file with the provided configuration content, then run the provided command to deploy the helm chart to your environment. Click Next.

  5. Wait for the SWO K8s Collector to send data to SolarWinds Observability or click Skip Verification.

Observe monitored host entity.

Information collected for your Kubernetes cluster and node entities are available in widgets in the Entity Explorer, area overviews, and custom dashboards.

  • Click Kubernetes to see an overview of your Kubernetes cluster and node entities.

  • Review an individual entity's details in the Entity Explorer.

See Observe entities.

Analyze individual metrics.

Click Analyze in the left-hand navigation and click Metrics to see a list of metrics for all entities in the Metrics Explorer. Use the search field to find metrics for your Kubernetes entities. Click a metric to see a history of measurements collected for your Kubernetes entities.

Check out triggered alerts.

  1. On the Home page, click View All Alerts in the Active Alerts widget. This opens the Active Alerts view.

  2. Click an entity with issues to go to the entity details page for more information.

See Alerts.