Dear Colleagues, I love the bundled Lens Metrics and always install and use them. However this time a have a cluster with the kube-state-metrics addon already installed (by kOps). There is a warning in the Lens Metrics installation screen: “Enable this only if you don’t have existing {kube-state-metrics,node-exporter} stack installed”, does it mean I should not install the bundled Lens Metrics at all in the cluster, or only should not install the bundled kube-state-metrics stack, or…? How do the bundled Lens metrics coexist or conflict with other metrics packages? Thank you in advance for a clarification.
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If you wish to use the bundled Lens Metrics (built-in metrics provider) then you must enable the bundled prometheus stack. Enable the kube-state-metrics and node-exporter stacks if they are not otherwise already installed.
Also, from the Cluster Settings → Metrics page, select Lens for the PROMETHEUS field, particularly if there is another prometheus stack present on the cluster (you can safely select Auto Detect Prometheus if there are no other prometheus stacks installed).
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Do you mean that I can have multiple prometheus stacks simultaneously in the cluster (the one bundled with Lens and some other one installed from Helm) and they will not conflict?
You should be able to have multiple prometheus stacks. Lens should be communicating only with the prometheus service you point it to. Having multiple kube-state-metrics or node-exporter installs may cause issues.
Having multiple kube-state-metrics or node-exporter installs may cause issues.
Can Lens’ bundled kube-state-metrics stack coexist with the metrics-server ? Are these things different or are they essentially the same?
I need to run the metrics-server addon and would like to make sure it does not cause issues with the Lens’ bundled Kube State Metrics.
kube-state-metrics and metrics-server are different things. Having both installed shouldn’t impact the bundled lens metrics but I can’t say for sure. Inspect the metrics output before and after installing the metrics-server addon?
How can I inspect the metrics output? Can you please be more specific? I only watch the metrics in the Lens app as nice graphical diagrams. Is there a kubectl command or something?
I just meant observe the charts, make sure they don’t change unexpectedly, such as an increase that might indicate something is counted twice. To be sure you’d want to dig into the workings of prometheus, node-exporter, kube-state-metrics, metrics-server, etc.
Once we are at it, is there a way to look at the older historical data? The visual charts only display 1 hour of history.
A revamp of the metrics displays is underway, including up to 24 hour span for the charts. It likely won’t make the next release (should be out this week), but one after that.
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