Docker desktop allow you to have a Kubernetes installation in your local machine, by default it provides most of the features required by a developer. However, metric-server is not part of the built-in features of docker-desktop. It means that if you need or want to access metric-server from your local Kubernetes (docker-desktop), you will need to set it up first.
What is the Metrics Server?
The Kubernetes Metrics Server is a cluster-wide aggregator of resource usage data. The Kubernetes Metrics Server collects resource metrics from the kubelet running on each worker node and exposes them in the Kubernetes API server through the Kubernetes Metrics API.
In other words, it allows you to know how many resources (CPU, memory) are being consumed by the pods or nodes in a specific moment.
Why might I need to use metric server ?
Metric Server helps to the observability of the Cluster, from checking manually using kubectl
to the Kubernetes dashboard, another monitor tool over the k8s cluster or even a custom tool to monitor our pods on the cluster. Whichever of the scenarios, the way to know the memory, and cpu consumption of a POD in a specific moment is by using metric server.
In production ready clusters (not Docker Desktop), it could be used to define policies for horizontal autoscaling Nodes. So, a new node could be added to the cluster if the existing node resources are over a defined threshold.
Metric Server Setup
It’s very straight forward, just copy the following snippet code and save it in a file with yaml
extension. Then, let’s apply the file in your docker-desktop Kubernetes instance.
kubectl apply -f metric-server.yaml
This is the yaml file to copy…
apiVersion: v1 kind: ServiceAccount metadata: labels: k8s-app: metrics-server name: metrics-server namespace: kube-system --- apiVersion: rbac.authorization.k8s.io/v1 kind: ClusterRole metadata: labels: k8s-app: metrics-server rbac.authorization.k8s.io/aggregate-to-admin: "true" rbac.authorization.k8s.io/aggregate-to-edit: "true" rbac.authorization.k8s.io/aggregate-to-view: "true" name: system:aggregated-metrics-reader rules: - apiGroups: - metrics.k8s.io resources: - pods - nodes verbs: - get - list - watch --- apiVersion: rbac.authorization.k8s.io/v1 kind: ClusterRole metadata: labels: k8s-app: metrics-server name: system:metrics-server rules: - apiGroups: - "" resources: - pods - nodes - nodes/stats - namespaces - configmaps verbs: - get - list - watch --- apiVersion: rbac.authorization.k8s.io/v1 kind: RoleBinding metadata: labels: k8s-app: metrics-server name: metrics-server-auth-reader namespace: kube-system roleRef: apiGroup: rbac.authorization.k8s.io kind: Role name: extension-apiserver-authentication-reader subjects: - kind: ServiceAccount name: metrics-server namespace: kube-system --- apiVersion: rbac.authorization.k8s.io/v1 kind: ClusterRoleBinding metadata: labels: k8s-app: metrics-server name: metrics-server:system:auth-delegator roleRef: apiGroup: rbac.authorization.k8s.io kind: ClusterRole name: system:auth-delegator subjects: - kind: ServiceAccount name: metrics-server namespace: kube-system --- apiVersion: rbac.authorization.k8s.io/v1 kind: ClusterRoleBinding metadata: labels: k8s-app: metrics-server name: system:metrics-server roleRef: apiGroup: rbac.authorization.k8s.io kind: ClusterRole name: system:metrics-server subjects: - kind: ServiceAccount name: metrics-server namespace: kube-system --- apiVersion: v1 kind: Service metadata: labels: k8s-app: metrics-server name: metrics-server namespace: kube-system spec: ports: - name: https port: 443 protocol: TCP targetPort: https selector: k8s-app: metrics-server --- apiVersion: apps/v1 kind: Deployment metadata: labels: k8s-app: metrics-server name: metrics-server namespace: kube-system spec: selector: matchLabels: k8s-app: metrics-server strategy: rollingUpdate: maxUnavailable: 0 template: metadata: labels: k8s-app: metrics-server spec: containers: - args: - --cert-dir=/tmp - --secure-port=4443 - --kubelet-preferred-address-types=InternalIP,ExternalIP,Hostname - --kubelet-use-node-status-port - --kubelet-insecure-tls image: k8s.gcr.io/metrics-server/metrics-server:v0.4.2 imagePullPolicy: IfNotPresent livenessProbe: failureThreshold: 3 httpGet: path: /livez port: https scheme: HTTPS periodSeconds: 10 name: metrics-server ports: - containerPort: 4443 name: https protocol: TCP readinessProbe: failureThreshold: 3 httpGet: path: /readyz port: https scheme: HTTPS periodSeconds: 10 securityContext: readOnlyRootFilesystem: true runAsNonRoot: true runAsUser: 1000 volumeMounts: - mountPath: /tmp name: tmp-dir nodeSelector: kubernetes.io/os: linux priorityClassName: system-cluster-critical serviceAccountName: metrics-server volumes: - emptyDir: {} name: tmp-dir --- apiVersion: apiregistration.k8s.io/v1 kind: APIService metadata: labels: k8s-app: metrics-server name: v1beta1.metrics.k8s.io spec: group: metrics.k8s.io groupPriorityMinimum: 100 insecureSkipTLSVerify: true service: name: metrics-server namespace: kube-system version: v1beta1 versionPriority: 100
Verifying Metric Server is already installed
You should see a metric-server-XXXX pod running in the kube-system namespace.
kubectl get pods -n kube-system | grep metrics-server
References
- https://www.metricfire.com/blog/how-to-monitor-your-kubernetes-metrics-server/
- https://www.ibm.com/docs/en/spp/10.1.8?topic=prerequisites-kubernetes-verifying-whether-metrics-server-is-running
- https://kubernetes.io/docs/tasks/debug/debug-cluster/resource-metrics-pipeline/