Prometheus + AlertManager

Setting up metrics with alerts, then installing a metrics sidecar exporter that works in Istio’s service mesh.

So many numbers… what do they all mean?

Introduction

This is a full tutorial on setting up Prometheus with Alertmanager on Kubernetes along with the alerts I use. Alerts will be hooked up with Slack (as I never look at emails, lol). The focus will be on getting useful alerts, as opposed to using metrics for determining resource usage. Finally, I found setting up exporters as sidecars in pods using Istio’s service mesh a bit of a challenge, so I’ll include an explanation of how to get that going at the end.

Prometheus + AlertManager: Abaganon

What This Tutorial Covers

1. Installing Prometheus with Alertmanager
2. Explanation of the Alerts
3. Setting Up Nginx Exporter as a Sidecar in Istio’s Service Mesh

What You Need For This Tutorial

A Kubernetes Cluster

Metrics give you great visibility into what’s going on in your cluster

Install Prometheus with Alertmanager

The easiest way to install Prometheus is with helm. First create the following values.yml file. You’ll notice the alerts I use are configured in this file.

Now you can install with the following command: