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Integration with Kubernetes

This guide provides step-by-step instructions to integrate Kubernetes with OpenObserve for observability.

Overview

Kubernetes monitoring differs from traditional server-based monitoring. Instead of only tracking system uptime, you need insights into pods, services, microservices interactions, events, logs, and traces.

OpenTelemetry provides a unified way to collect telemetry data from Kubernetes, and OpenObserve makes it easy to ingest, store, visualize, and analyze that data with minimal setup.

Integration Architechture for monitoring K8s in OpenObserve

The integration includes:

  • Metrics: CPU, memory, storage, and network usage across nodes and pods
  • Logs: Container logs for troubleshooting
  • Events: Kubernetes system events with severity levels
  • Traces: Auto-instrumented application traces without heavy manual changes

Steps to Integrate

Prerequisites
  • A Kubernetes cluster (Minikube, GKE, EKS, or similar)
  • Helm 3.x installed locally
  • kubectl configured for your cluster
  • OpenObserve account (Cloud or Self-Hosted)
Step 1: Install Cert-Manager

Cert-Manager manages TLS certificates in Kubernetes and is required by the OpenTelemetry Operator. 

    kubectl apply -f https://github.com/cert-manager/cert-manager/releases/download/v1.13.1/cert-manager.yaml

Wait about 2 minutes for the webhook to be ready before continuing.

Step 2: Add the OpenObserve Helm Repository 
helm repo add openobserve https://charts.openobserve.ai
helm repo update

This makes OpenObserve components available for deployment.

Step 3: Install Prometheus Operator CRDs

These CRDs are required by the OpenTelemetry Operator for metrics collection.

kubectl create -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/prometheus-operator/prometheus-operator/main/example/prometheus-operator-crd/monitoring.coreos.com_servicemonitors.yaml
kubectl create -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/prometheus-operator/prometheus-operator/main/example/prometheus-operator-crd/monitoring.coreos.com_podmonitors.yaml
kubectl create -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/prometheus-operator/prometheus-operator/refs/heads/main/example/prometheus-operator-crd/monitoring.coreos.com_scrapeconfigs.yaml
kubectl create -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/prometheus-operator/prometheus-operator/refs/heads/main/example/prometheus-operator-crd/monitoring.coreos.com_probes.yaml
Step 4: Install the OpenTelemetry Operator 
kubectl apply -f https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-operator/releases/latest/download/opentelemetry-operator.yaml

The operator manages the OpenTelemetry Collector and CRDs for telemetry pipelines.

Step 5: Create Namespace for OpenObserve Collector 
kubectl create ns openobserve-collector
Step 6: Deploy OpenObserve Collector with Helm

Use the pre-filled command from OpenObserve (Data Sources section), with your auth token. Go to Data Sources -> Kubernetes -> Copy the command to use.

Install the OpenObserve Collector in your cluster:

helm --namespace openobserve-collector \
install o2c openobserve/openobserve-collector \
--set k8sCluster=cluster1  \
--set exporters."otlphttp/openobserve".endpoint=<O2_ENDPOINT>/api/default \
--set exporters."otlphttp/openobserve".headers.Authorization="Basic <BASE64_AUTH>" \
--set exporters."otlphttp/openobserve_k8s_events".endpoint=<O2_ENDPOINT>/api/default \
--set exporters."otlphttp/openobserve_k8s_events".headers.Authorization="Basic <BASE64_AUTH>" \
--create-namespace

Replace <O2_ENDPOINT> depending on your setup:

Setup Endpoint
Local OpenObserve http://localhost:5080
In-cluster O2 http://<helm-release-name>-openobserve-router.<namespace>.svc.cluster.local:5080

This deployment configures the OpenObserve Collector to:

  • Collect metrics from your cluster
  • Collect events from your cluster
  • Collect logs from your cluster
  • Enable auto-instrumentation traces
Step 7: Auto-Instrumentation for Traces

OpenTelemetry supports automatic application instrumentation. Add annotations to your pods or namespaces:

  • Java : 
    instrumentation.opentelemetry.io/inject-java: "openobserve-collector/openobserve-java
  • .NET 
    instrumentation.opentelemetry.io/inject-dotnet: "openobserve-collector/openobserve-dotnet"
  • NodeJS 
    instrumentation.opentelemetry.io/inject-nodejs: "openobserve-collector/openobserve-nodejs"
  • Python 
    instrumentation.opentelemetry.io/inject-python: "openobserve-collector/openobserve-python"
  • Go (eBPF) 
    instrumentation.opentelemetry.io/inject-go: "openobserve-collector/openobserve-go"
instrumentation.opentelemetry.io/otel-go-auto-target-exe: "/path/to/container/executable"
Step 8: Verify logs in OpenObserve
  1. Go to Logs in Openobserve → select stream K8s_events → set time range → Run Query to check for EC2 logs. K8s event logs in Openobserve
  2. Go to Metrics section in Stream page, you will find bunch of K8s metrics K8s metrics in Openobserve

Pre-Built Dashboards

You can import dashboards from the OpenObserve community repository for quick insights:

  • Namespace (Pods) Dashboard – resource consumption by pods
  • Namespaces Dashboard – cluster-wide resource allocation
  • Events Dashboard – system events and severities
  • Node (Pods) Dashboard – node-level pod performance

Example Dashboard

Troubleshooting

Collector pods not running

  • Check namespace: kubectl get pods -n openobserve-collector
  • Review pod logs: kubectl logs <pod-name> -n openobserve-collector

No data in OpenObserve

  • Verify Helm values include the correct OpenObserve URL and auth token
  • Ensure network connectivity from cluster → OpenObserve endpoint

Auto-instrumentation not working

  • Confirm pod annotations are applied
  • Make sure language-specific auto-instrumentation images are available