Prometheus Adapter for Kubernetes Metrics APIs

External

• https://github.com/DirectXMan12/k8s-prometheus-adapter
• https://github.com/prometheus-community/helm-charts/tree/main/charts/prometheus-adapter

Internal

• Prometheus Concepts
• Metrics in Kubernetes
• Horizontal Pod Autoscaler

Overview

The Prometheus adapter is a Kubernetes Aggregation Layer extension and operates as an extension API server. It knows how to communicate with both Kubernetes and Prometheus, acting as a translator between the two. The API is registered as "custom.metrics.k8s.io/v1beta1".

How it Works

The adapter processes the metrics coming from Prometheus as follows:

Discovery: it discovers available metrics.

Association: it determines which kubernetes resource each metric is associated with.

Naming: it determines how it should expose the metrics in the custom metric API.

Querying: Finally, it figures out how it should query Prometheus to get the actual numbers.

The adapter performs each of the steps for each metric. These steps are formally described for each metric with a rule:

rules:
  - {...}
  - {...}

Helm Installation

https://github.com/prometheus-community/helm-charts/tree/main/charts/prometheus-adapter

Install Prometheus first.

The adapter will be installed in the same namespace as Prometheus.

helm repo add prometheus-community https://prometheus-community.github.io/helm-charts
helm search repo prometheus-community

helm install -n prom prometheus-adapter prometheus-community/prometheus-adapter -f ./prometheus-adapter-overlay.yaml

See Configuration below for prometheus-adapter-overlay.yaml.

Test installation:

kubectl get --raw /apis/custom.metrics.k8s.io/v1beta1 | jq

{
  "kind": "APIResourceList",
  "apiVersion": "v1",
  "groupVersion": "custom.metrics.k8s.io/v1beta1",
  "resources": [
    {
      "name": "jobs.batch/kubernetes_build_info",
      "singularName": "",
      "namespaced": true,
      "kind": "MetricValueList",
      "verbs": [
        "get"
      ]
    },
    {
      "name": "services/kube_deployment_spec_strategy_rollingupdate_max_surge",
      "singularName": "",
      "namespaced": true,
      "kind": "MetricValueList",
      "verbs": [
        "get"
      ]
    },
   ...
}

Configuration

Use the following prometheus-adapter-overlay.yaml:

helm show values prometheus-community/prometheus-adapter > ~/tmp/prometheus-adapter-overlay.yaml

prometheus:
  url: http://prometheus-kube-prometheus-prometheus.prom.svc

Increase log level when installing the chart.

Test:

kubectl get --raw "/apis/custom.metrics.k8s.io/v1beta1/namespaces/default/pods/*/http_requests?selector=app%3Dsample-app"

Configuration Resources:

• Configuration Reference: https://github.com/DirectXMan12/k8s-prometheus-adapter/blob/master/docs/config.md
• Basics of setting the Prometheus Adapter walkthrough (the full walkthrough): https://github.com/DirectXMan12/k8s-prometheus-adapter/blob/master/docs/walkthrough.md
• Configuration walkthrough: https://github.com/DirectXMan12/k8s-prometheus-adapter/blob/master/docs/config-walkthrough.md
• Default configuration: https://github.com/DirectXMan12/k8s-prometheus-adapter/blob/master/deploy/manifests/custom-metrics-config-map.yaml
• Chart README configuration section: https://github.com/prometheus-community/helm-charts/tree/main/charts/prometheus-adapter#configuration

Troubleshooting

tail the logs, Prometheus connection refused is reported there.