💠Kubernetes
StackState core integration
Last updated
StackState core integration
Last updated
This page describes StackState v4.4.x.
The StackState 4.4 version range is End of Life (EOL) and no longer supported. We encourage customers still running the 4.4 version range to upgrade to a more recent release.
The Kubernetes integration is used to create a near real-time synchronization of topology and associated internal services from a Kubernetes cluster to StackState. This StackPack allows monitoring of the following:
Workloads
Nodes, pods, containers and services
Configmaps, secrets and volumes
Data is retrieved by the deployed StackState Agents and then pushed to StackState via the Agent StackPack and the Kubernetes StackPack.
In StackState:
Topology data is translated into components and relations.
Tags defined in Kubernetes are added to components and relations in StackState.
Metrics data is stored and accessible within StackState. Relevant metrics data is mapped to associated components and relations in StackState.
Kubernetes events are available in the StackState UI Events Perspective and listed in the details pane on the right of the StackState UI.
The following prerequisites are required to install the Kubernetes StackPack and deploy the StackState Agent and Cluster Agent:
A Kubernetes Cluster must be up and running.
A recent version of Helm 3.
A user with permissions to create privileged pods, ClusterRoles and ClusterRoleBindings:
ClusterRole and ClusterRoleBinding are needed to grant StackState Agents permissions to access the Kubernetes API.
StackState Agents need to run in a privileged pod to be able to gather information on network connections and host information.
Install the Kubernetes StackPack from the StackState UI StackPacks > Integrations screen. You will need to provide the following parameters:
Kubernetes Cluster Name - A name to identify the cluster. This does not need to match the cluster name used in kubeconfig, however, that is usually a good candidate for a unique name.
If the Agent StackPack is not already installed, this will be automatically installed together with the Kubernetes StackPack. This is required to work with the StackState Agent, which will need to be deployed on each node in the Kubernetes cluster.
For the Kubernetes integration to retrieve topology, events and metrics data, you will need to have the following installed on your Kubernetes cluster:
A StackState Agent on each node in the cluster
StackState Cluster Agent on one node
kube-state-metrics
Follow the instructions to deploy StackState Agent V2, the Cluster Agent and kube-state-metrics.
To integrate with other services, a separate instance of the StackState Agent should be deployed on a standalone VM. It is not currently possible to configure a StackState Agent deployed on a Kubernetes cluster with checks that integrate with other services.
To check the status of the Kubernetes integration, check that the StackState Cluster Agent (cluster-agent) pod and all of the StackState Agent (cluster-agent-agent) pods have status ready.
The Kubernetes integration retrieves the following data:
The Kubernetes integration retrieves all events from the Kubernetes cluster. The table below shows which event category will be assigned to each event type in StackState:
| StackState event category | Kubernetes events |
|---|---|
Activities |
|
Alerts |
|
Changes |
|
Others | All other events |
The Kubernetes integration makes all metrics from the Kubernetes cluster available in StackState. Relevant metrics are automatically mapped to the associated components.
All retrieved metrics can be browsed or added to a component as a telemetry stream. Select the data source StackState Metrics and type kubernetes in the Select box to get a full list of all available metrics.
The Kubernetes integration retrieves components and relations for the Kubernetes cluster.
Note that topology information will not be gathered from Kubernetes clusters that use the containerd container runtime.
Components
The following Kubernetes topology data is available in StackState as components:
Cluster | Ingress |
Namespace | Job |
Node | Persistent Volume |
Pod | ReplicaSet |
Container | Secret |
ConfigMap | Service |
CronJob | StatefulSet |
DaemonSet | Volume |
Deployment |
Relations
The following relations between components are retrieved:
Container → Volume
CronJob → Job
DaemonSet → Pod
Deployment → ReplicaSet
Job → Pod
Ingress → Service
Namespace → CronJob, DaemonSet, Deployment, Job, ReplicaSet, Service, StatefulSet
Node → Cluster relation
Pod → ConfigMap, Container, Deployment, Node, Secret, Volume
ReplicaSet → Pod
Service → ExternalService, Pod
StatefulSet → Pod
Direct communication between processes
Process → Process communication via Kubernetes service
Process → Process communication via headless Kubernetes service
The Kubernetes integration does not retrieve any traces data.
All tags defined in Kubernetes will be retrieved and added to the associated components and relations in StackState.
The StackState Agent talks to the kubelet and kube-state-metrics API.
The StackState Agent and Cluster Agent connect to the Kubernetes API to retrieve cluster wide information and Kubernetes events. The following API endpoints used:
| Resource type | REST API endpoint |
|---|---|
Cluster > ComponentStatus |
|
Cluster > Event |
|
Cluster > Namespace |
|
Cluster > Node |
|
Services > Endpoints |
|
Services > Ingress |
|
Services > Service |
|
Workloads > CronJob |
|
Workloads > DaemonSet |
|
Workloads > Deployment |
|
Workloads > Job |
|
Workloads > Pod |
|
Workloads > ReplicaSet |
|
Workloads > StatefulSet |
|
Config and Storage > ConfigMap |
|
Config and Storage > Secret |
|
Config and Storage > PersistentVolume |
|
Config and Storage > PersistentVolumeClaimSpec |
|
Config and Storage > VolumeAttachment |
|
| |
|
For further details, refer to the Kubernetes API documentation (kubernetes.io).
A number of actions are added to StackState when the Kubernetes StackPack is installed. They are available from the Actions section on the right of the screen when a Kubernetes component is selected or from the component context menu, displayed when you hover over a Kubernetes component in the Topology Perspective
| Action | Available for component types | Description |
|---|---|---|
Show configuration and storage | pods containers | Display the selected pod or container with its configmaps, secrets and volumes |
Show dependencies (deep) | deployment replicaset replicationcontroller statefulset daemonset job cronjob pod | Displays all dependencies (up to 6 levels deep) of the selected pod or workload. |
Show pods | deployment replicaset replicationcontroller statefulset daemonset job cronjob | Displays the pods for the selected workload. |
Show pods & services | namespace | Opens a view for the pods/services in the selected namespace |
Show services | namespace | Open a view for the service and ingress components in the selected namespace |
Show workloads | namespace | Show workloads in the selected namespace |
Details of installed actions can be found in the StackState UI Settings > Actions > Component Actions screen.
When the Kubernetes integration is enabled, the following Kubernetes views are available in StackState for each cluster:
Kubernetes - Applications -
Kubernetes - Infrastructure -
Kubernetes - Namespaces -
Kubernetes - Workload Controllers -
The code for the StackState Agent Kubernetes check is open source and available on GitHub at:
Troubleshooting steps for any known issues can be found in the StackState support Knowledge base.
To uninstall the Kubernetes StackPack, go to the StackState UI StackPacks > Integrations > Kubernetes screen and click UNINSTALL. All Kubernetes StackPack specific configuration will be removed from StackState.
Kubernetes StackPack v3.9.5 (2021-07-14)
Improvement: Documentation update
Improvement: Update of stackstate.url for the installation documentation of the StackState Agent
Kubernetes StackPack v3.9.4 (2021-05-11)
Bug Fix: Set aggregation methods for desired replicas streams to be compatible with insufficient replicas check
Bug Fix: Set aggregation method for not ready endpoints stream (on a service) to be compatible with endpoints check
Kubernetes StackPack v3.9.3 (2021-04-29)
Bug Fix: Change dependency to latest version of k8s-common, as the previous release is broken.
Kubernetes StackPack v3.9.2 (2021-04-29)
Improvement: Prevented readiness checks from firing pre-maturely by setting window from 10 seconds to 15 minutes for workloads, pods, and containers.
Improvement: Prevented readiness checks from firing pre-maturely by changing how service health is determined, and extended the evaluation window to 15 minutes.
Kubernetes StackPack v3.9.1 (2021-04-12)
Improvement: Common bumped from 2.5.0 to 2.5.1
Kubernetes StackPack v3.9.0 (2021-04-02)
Improvement: Enable auto grouping on generated views.
Improvement: Update documentation.
Improvement: Common bumped from 2.4.1 to 2.5.0
Improvement: StackState min version bumped to 4.3.0
Kubernetes StackPack v3.8.0 (2021-03-08)
Feature: Namespaces are now a component in StackState with a namespaces view for each cluster
Feature: New component actions for quick navigation on workloads, pods and namespaces
Feature: Added a "Pod Scheduled" metric stream to pods
Feature: Secrets are now a component in StackState
Improvement: The "Desired vs Ready" checks on workloads now use the "Ready replicas" stream instead of the replicas stream.
Improvement: Use standard (blue) Kubernetes icons
Bug fix: Fixed Kubernetes synchronization when a component had no labels but only tags
Kubernetes StackPack v3.7.2 (2020-08-18)
Feature: Introduced the Release notes pop up for customer
Kubernetes StackPack v3.7.1 (2020-08-10)
Feature: Introduced Kubernetes specific component identifiers
Kubernetes StackPack v3.7.0 (2020-08-04)
Improvement: Deprecated stackpack specific layers and introduced a new common layer structure.
Kubernetes StackPack v3.6.0 (2020-06-19)
Improvement: Set the stream priorities on all streams.
