Install Prometheus and Grafana in your Kubernetes cluster

We'll be installing prometheus-operator using this helm chart. According to the chart description, the default installation is sufficient for monitoring whichever cluster its deployed into.

However, if desired, there are plenty of values that can be configured. But for this guide, we're going to install prometheus-operator with the default configuration.

Upgrade helm, if necessary

This may not be required, but I'm going to put it here just in case. You may need to upgrade helm before installing.

helm init --upgrade

Install the prometheus-operator chart

helm install stable/prometheus-operator --namespace monitoring --name prometheus

In the command above, I've run the basic helm install command but also specified the name and the namespace. Otherwise, you'll get a random release name (something like old-camel or simple-cactus), and it will be installed in the default namespace.

You might be disappointed to hear, but that's it! You've installed Prometheus and Grafana in your k8s cluster. In subsequent steps, I'll provide a few more tips on getting logged in and set up.

Get the password

To log in to the Grafana dashboard, you need to grab the admin password:

kubectl get secret --namespace monitoring prometheus-grafana -o jsonpath="{.data.admin-password}" | base64 --decode ; echo

Forward port 80

This chart creates a grafana service running on port 80. I'm going to use this service to forward port 3000 on our local machine to one of the grafana pods.

k port-forward -n monitoring service/prometheus-grafana 3000:80

Log in at localhost:3000

Open a browser, and navigate to http://localhost:3000. There you can log in using:

Did you know Kubernetes is compatible with Superset? Check out this guide to install Apache Superset on a GKE Kubernetes Cluster.