Prometheus Node Exporter service

The Prometheus Node Exporter is simpler to deploy

This part covers the preparation of the Kustomize project for the Prometheus Node Exporter. Compared to other services like the Kube State Metrics, this Node Exporter is less complex to declare. The YAML manifests declared here are adaptations based on the ones shown in this article by Ichlaw posted in Medium and this other one found in GeeksForGeeks.

Kustomize project folders for Prometheus Node Exporter

Start by creating the folders needed for the corresponding Kustomize project:

$ mkdir -p $HOME/k8sprjs/monitoring/components/agent-prometheus-node-exporter/resources

Prometheus Node Exporter DaemonSet

The Prometheus Node Exporter service does not require to store anything but, instead of using a Deployment resource, you will declare its pod in a DaemonSet. This is because the node exporter is essentially an agent that gets metrics from the Linux subsystem of the Kubernetes cluster nodes, and you want to get those values from all your K3s cluster’s nodes. With a DaemonSet you can replicate a pod in all your nodes automatically, right what you want for this service:

1. Create a file named agent-prometheus-node-exporter.daemonset.yaml under the agent-prometheus-node-exporter/resources folder:

   $ touch $HOME/k8sprjs/monitoring/components/agent-prometheus-node-exporter/resources/agent-prometheus-node-exporter.daemonset.yaml

2. Declare the DaemonSet for the Prometheus Node Exporter in the agent-prometheus-node-exporter.daemonset.yaml file:

   # Prometheus Node Exporter DaemonSet for a regular pod
   apiVersion: apps/v1
   kind: DaemonSet
   
   metadata:
     name: agent-prometheus-node-exporter
   spec:
     template:
       spec:
         containers:
         - name: metrics
           image: prom/node-exporter:v1.10.2
           args:
           - --path.sysfs=/host/sys
           - --path.rootfs=/host/root
           - --no-collector.hwmon
           - --no-collector.wifi
           - --collector.filesystem.ignored-mount-points=^/(dev|proc|sys|var/lib/docker/.+|var/lib/kubelet/pods/.+)($|/)
           - --collector.netclass.ignored-devices=^(veth.*)$
           ports:
           - containerPort: 9100
             name: metrics
             protocol: TCP
           resources:
             requests:
               cpu: 102m
               memory: 180Mi
           volumeMounts:
           - mountPath: /host/sys
             mountPropagation: HostToContainer
             name: sys
             readOnly: true
           - mountPath: /host/root
             mountPropagation: HostToContainer
             name: root
             readOnly: true
         volumes:
         - hostPath:
             path: /sys
           name: sys
         - hostPath:
             path: /
           name: root
         tolerations:
         - effect: NoSchedule
           operator: Exists

   This DaemonSet resource has some particularities in its spec.template.spec block:

   • metrics container:
     Executes the Prometheus Node Exporter service:

     • In the args section you have several options configured:

       • --path.sysfs and --path.rootfs indicate what are the root (/) and sys folder (/sys) paths that the agent has to monitor in the nodes. These paths are enabled in the volumeMounts and volumes sections as hostPath routes.

       • The no-collector options disable specific data collectors. In this case, the hwmon, which exposes hardware and sensor data, and the wifi, to not collect stats from wifi interfaces.

       • The last two collector options are just patterns that leave out, from the metrics collected, the storage devices and the virtual Ethernet devices created by the Kubernetes engine for the containers.

     • The volumes and volumeMounts refer to paths from the K3s cluster nodes themselves, invoked with the hostPath declarations. The paths indicated for the hostPath volumes are correct for a Debian Linux system like the ones running your nodes, but you should be careful of validating them whenever you use some other Linux distribution.

   • tolerations:
     As it was specified in the Kube State Metrics deployment, you need this section to allow the Prometheus Node Exporter pod to be scheduled in nodes that have the NoSchedule taint. Remember that your K3s server node is tainted to not allow any kind of workload being scheduled in it.

Prometheus Node Exporter Service

Declare the necessary Service resource for completing this Prometheus Node Exporter setup:

1. Generate an agent-prometheus-node-exporter.service.yaml under the agent-prometheus-node-exporter/resources folder:

   $ touch $HOME/k8sprjs/monitoring/components/agent-prometheus-node-exporter/resources/agent-prometheus-node-exporter.service.yaml

2. Declare the Service in agent-prometheus-node-exporter.service.yaml:

   # Prometheus Node Exporter headless service
   apiVersion: v1
   kind: Service
   
   metadata:
     name: agent-prometheus-node-exporter
     annotations:
       prometheus.io/scrape: 'true'
       prometheus.io/port:   '9100'
   spec:
     type: ClusterIP
     clusterIP: None
     ports:
     - name: metrics
       protocol: TCP
       port: 9100
       targetPort: metrics

   There is nothing special about this service. Just notice that it does have the annotations to inform Prometheus that it can scrape metrics from this service.

Service’s absolute internal FQDN

As a component of the monitoring stack, this headless service is going to be placed under the monitoring namespace. This means that its absolute Fully Qualified Domain Name (FQDN) will be:

agent-prometheus-node-exporter.monitoring.svc.homelab.cluster.

Prometheus Node Exporter Kustomize project

The last thing to declare is the Kustomization manifest for this Prometheus Node Exporter project:

1. Create a kustomization.yaml file in the agent-prometheus-node-exporter folder:

   $ touch $HOME/k8sprjs/monitoring/components/agent-prometheus-node-exporter/kustomization.yaml

2. Declare your Kustomization manifest in the kustomization.yaml file:

   # Prometheus Node Exporter setup
   apiVersion: kustomize.config.k8s.io/v1beta1
   kind: Kustomization
   
   labels:
   - pairs:
       app.kubernetes.io/component: exporter
       app.kubernetes.io/name: node-exporter
     includeSelectors: true
     includeTemplates: true
   
   resources:
   - resources/agent-prometheus-node-exporter.daemonset.yaml
   - resources/agent-prometheus-node-exporter.service.yaml
   
   images:
   - name: prom/node-exporter
     newTag: v1.10.2

   The labels are the same ones declared in one of the articles used as reference for this guide. Something else you can notice is that there is no replicas section. The DaemonSet itself takes care automatically of putting one replica of the generated pod on each cluster node.

Validating the Kustomize YAML output

Proceed now to validate the Kustomize project for your Prometheus Node Exporter service.

1. Dump the output of this Kustomize project in a file named agent-prometheus-node-exporter.k.output.yaml (or redirect it to your preferred text editor):

   $ kubectl kustomize $HOME/k8sprjs/monitoring/components/agent-prometheus-node-exporter > agent-prometheus-node-exporter.k.output.yaml

2. Open the agent-prometheus-node-exporter.k.output.yaml file and compare your resulting YAML output with the one below:

   apiVersion: v1
   kind: Service
   metadata:
     annotations:
       prometheus.io/port: "9100"
       prometheus.io/scrape: "true"
     labels:
       app.kubernetes.io/component: exporter
       app.kubernetes.io/name: node-exporter
     name: agent-prometheus-node-exporter
   spec:
     clusterIP: None
     ports:
     - name: metrics
       port: 9100
       protocol: TCP
       targetPort: metrics
     selector:
       app.kubernetes.io/component: exporter
       app.kubernetes.io/name: node-exporter
     type: ClusterIP
   ---
   apiVersion: apps/v1
   kind: DaemonSet
   metadata:
     labels:
       app.kubernetes.io/component: exporter
       app.kubernetes.io/name: node-exporter
     name: agent-prometheus-node-exporter
   spec:
     selector:
       matchLabels:
         app.kubernetes.io/component: exporter
         app.kubernetes.io/name: node-exporter
     template:
       metadata:
         labels:
           app.kubernetes.io/component: exporter
           app.kubernetes.io/name: node-exporter
       spec:
         containers:
         - args:
           - --path.sysfs=/host/sys
           - --path.rootfs=/host/root
           - --no-collector.hwmon
           - --no-collector.wifi
           - --collector.filesystem.ignored-mount-points=^/(dev|proc|sys|var/lib/docker/.+|var/lib/kubelet/pods/.+)($|/)
           - --collector.netclass.ignored-devices=^(veth.*)$
           image: prom/node-exporter:v1.10.2
           name: metrics
           ports:
           - containerPort: 9100
             name: metrics
             protocol: TCP
           resources:
             requests:
               cpu: 102m
               memory: 180Mi
           volumeMounts:
           - mountPath: /host/sys
             mountPropagation: HostToContainer
             name: sys
             readOnly: true
           - mountPath: /host/root
             mountPropagation: HostToContainer
             name: root
             readOnly: true
         tolerations:
         - effect: NoSchedule
           operator: Exists
         volumes:
         - hostPath:
             path: /sys
           name: sys
         - hostPath:
             path: /
           name: root

   There is nothing new in this output for you this far in the guide. Just be sure that all values are correct and the labels appear where they should.

Do not deploy this Prometheus Node Exporter project on its own

This Prometheus Node Exporter is a component part of a bigger project yet to be completed: your monitoring stack. Wait until reaching the final part of this chapter G035 where you will have every component ready for deploying in your cluster.

Relevant system paths

Folders in kubectl client system

• $HOME/k8sprjs/monitoring
• $HOME/k8sprjs/monitoring/components
• $HOME/k8sprjs/monitoring/components/agent-prometheus-node-exporter
• $HOME/k8sprjs/monitoring/components/agent-prometheus-node-exporter/resources

Files in kubectl client system

• $HOME/k8sprjs/monitoring/components/agent-prometheus-node-exporter/kustomization.yaml
• $HOME/k8sprjs/monitoring/components/agent-prometheus-node-exporter/resources/agent-prometheus-node-exporter.daemonset.yaml
• $HOME/k8sprjs/monitoring/components/agent-prometheus-node-exporter/resources/agent-prometheus-node-exporter.service.yaml

References

Prometheus Node Exporter

• GitHub. Prometheus Node Exporter

• Docker. Hub. Prometheus Node Exporter container image

• Prometheus. Docs. Guides

  • Monitoring Linux host metrics with the Node Exporter

Other contents about Prometheus Node Exporter

• Medium. Ichlaw. Tutorial: Run Prometheus Node Exporter using Daemon Set for Kubernetes Service Discovery
• GeeksForGeeks. Setup Prometheus Node Exporter on Kubernetes

Kubernetes

DaemonSet

• Concepts. Workloads. Workload Management
  • DaemonSet

Pods Scheduling

• Concepts. Scheduling, Preemption and Eviction
  • Taints and Tolerations

Other Kubernetes-related contents

About DaemonSets

• K8s: Deployments vs StatefulSets vs DaemonSets
• Difference between daemonsets and deployments

About pods scheduling

• Theodo. Working with taints and tolerations in Kubernetes
• GitHub. K3s. Issues. Node taint k3s-controlplane=true:NoExecute