Kubernetes install

SUSE Observability Self-hosted

Before you start

Extra notes for installing on:

• Kubernetes clusters with limited permissions: Read the required permissions.

• Alibaba Cloud Container Service for Kubernetes (ACK): Read the ACK installation notes.

• OpenShift: Refer to the OpenShift installation instructions.

Before you start the installation of SUSE Observability:

• Check the requirements to make sure that your Kubernetes environment fits the setup that you will use (recommended, minimal or non- high availability).

• Check that you have the required permissions.

• Add the SUSE Observability helm repository to the local helm client:

helm repo add suse-observability https://charts.rancher.com/server-charts/prime/suse-observability
helm repo update

Install SUSE Observability

For environments without internet access, also known as air-gapped environments, first follow these extra instructions.

Also make sure to follow the air-gapped installation instructions whenever those are present for a step.

1. Create the namespace where SUSE Observability will be installed

2. Generate baseConfig_values.yaml and sizing_values.yaml

3. Deploy SUSE Observability with Helm

4. Access the SUSE Observability UI

Create namespace

Start by creating the namespace where you want to install SUSE Observability and deploy the secret in that namespace. In our walkthrough we will use the namespace suse-observability:

kubectl create namespace suse-observability

Generate baseConfig_values.yaml and sizing_values.yaml

The baseConfig_values.yaml file is required to deploy StackState with Helm. It contains your StackState license key, StackState Receiver API key and other important information. The sizing_values.yaml file is recommended to deploy StackState with Helm as it contains information about the resources that StackState will be provisioned with according to the size on the landscape you want to observe.

Before you continue: Make sure you have the latest version of the Helm charts with helm repo update.

The SUSE Observability baseConfig_values.yaml and sizing_values.yaml files can be generated by running a separate Helm Chart, the suse-observability/suse-observability-values chart. A sample command line is:

export VALUES_DIR=.
helm template \
  --set license='<your license>' \
  --set baseUrl='<suse-observability-base-url>' \
  --set sizing.profile='<sizing.profile>' \
  suse-observability-values \
  suse-observability/suse-observability-values --output-dir $VALUES_DIR

This command will generate a $VALUES_DIR/suse-observability-values/templates/baseConfig_values.yaml and a $VALUES_DIR/suse-observability-values/templates/sizing_values.yaml file which contains the necessary configuration for installing the SUSE Observability Helm Chart.

The SUSE Observability administrator passwords will be autogenerated by the above command and are output as comments in the generated basicConfig.yaml file. The actual values contain the bcrypt hashes of those passwords so that they're securely stored in the Helm release in the cluster.

The values that can be passed to this chart are:

Configuration	Value	Description
Basic Config generate	basicConfig.generate	Switch on or off the generation of the basicConfig_values.yaml file.
Receiver API Key	receiverApiKey	The API key used by SUSE Observability to receive data from agents. This is a secret key that should be kept private. If you omit this, a random key will be generated for you.
Base URL	baseUrl	The <STACKSTATE_BASE_URL>. The external URL for SUSE Observability that users and agents will use to connect. For example https://suse-observability.internal. If you haven't decided on an Ingress configuration yet, use http://localhost:8080. This can be updated later in the generated file.
Username and password**	-u -p	The username and password used by SUSE Observability to pull images. For air-gapped environments these need to be the username and password for the local contaier registry.
License key	license	The SUSE Observability license key.
Default password	adminPassword	The password for the default user (admin) to access SUSE Observability's UI. If you omit this, a random password will be generated for you. If you do pass this value and it's not bcrypt hashed, the chart will hash it for you.
Image Registry	imageRegistry	The registry where the SUSE Observability images are hosted. If not provided, the default value will be 'quay.io'
Pull Secret Username	pullSecret.username	The username used to pull images from the Docker registry where the SUSE Observability images are hosted. Only needed for custom registries.
Pull Secret Password	pullSecret.password	The password used to pull images from the Docker registry where the SUSE Observability images are hosted. Only needed for custom registries.
Sizing generate	sizing.generate	Switch on or off the generation of the sizing_values.yaml file.
Sizing profile	sizing.profile	OneOf trial, 10-nonha, 20-nonha, 50-nonha, 100-nonha, 150-ha, 250-ha, 500-ha. Based on this profiles the sizing_values.yaml file is generated containing default sizes for the SUSE Observability resources and configuration to be deployed on an Ha or NonHa mode. E.g. 10-nonha will produce a sizing_values.yaml meant to deploy a NonHa SUSE Observability instance to observe a 10 node cluster in a Non High Available mode. Currently moving from a nonha to an ha environment is not possible, so if you expect that your environment willrequire to observe around 150 nodes then better to go with ha immediately.

Store the generated basicConfig.yaml and sizing_values.yaml files somewhere safe. You can reuse this files for upgrades, which will save time and (more importantly) will ensure that SUSE Observability continues to use the same API key. This is desirable as it means Agents and other data providers for SUSE Observability won't need to be updated. The files can be regenerated independently using the switches basicConfig.generate=false and sizing.generate=false to disable any of them while still keeping the previosuly generated version of the file in the output-dir.

Deploy SUSE Observability with Helm

The recommended deployment of SUSE Observability is a production ready, high availability setup with many services running redundantly. If required, it's also possible to run SUSE Observability in a non-redundant setup, where each service has only a single replica. This setup is only recommended for a test environment.

For air-gapped environments follow the instructions for the air-gapped installations.

Setup

To deploy SUSE Observability on Kubernetes:

1. Before you deploy:

   • Create the namespace where SUSE Observability will be installed
   • Generate baseConfig_values.yaml and sizing_values.yaml
2. Deploy the latest SUSE Observability version to the suse-observability namespace with the following command:

helm upgrade \
  --install \
  --namespace suse-observability \
  --values $VALUES_DIR/suse-observability-values/templates/baseConfig_values.yaml \
  --values $VALUES_DIR/suse-observability-values/templates/sizing_values.yaml \
suse-observability \
suse-observability/suse-observability

Air-gapped setup

To deploy SUSE Observability in an air-gapped setup on Kubernetes:

1. Before you deploy:

   • Follow these extra instructions for air-gapped installations.
   • Create the namespace where SUSE Observability will be installed
   • Generate baseConfig_values.yaml and sizing_values.yaml
2. Deploy the latest SUSE Observability version to the suse-observability namespace with the following command:

helm upgrade \
  --install \
  --namespace suse-observability \
  --values local-docker-registry.yaml \
  --values $VALUES_DIR/suse-observability-values/templates/baseConfig_values.yaml \
  --values $VALUES_DIR/suse-observability-values/templates/sizing_values.yaml \
suse-observability \
suse-observability/suse-observability

After the install, the SUSE Observability release should be listed in the SUSE Observability namespace and all pods should be running:

# Check the release is listed
helm list --namespace suse-observability

# Check pods are running
# It may take some time for all pods to be installed or available
kubectl get pods --namespace suse-observability

Access the SUSE Observability UI

After SUSE Observability has been deployed you can check if all pods are up and running:

kubectl get pods --namespace suse-observability

When all pods are up, you can enable a port-forward:

kubectl port-forward service/<helm-release-name>-suse-observability-router 8080:8080 --namespace suse-observability

SUSE Observability will now be available in your browser at https://localhost:8080. Log in with the username admin and the default password provided in the values.yaml file.

Next steps are

• Expose SUSE Observability outside of the cluster
• Start monitoring your Kubernetes clusters
• Give your co-workers access.