Kubernetes Monitoring - K8s Cluster & Container Observability

Monitor Kubernetes clusters with comprehensive Kubernetes monitoring for K8s cluster monitoring, container monitoring, pod metrics, and microservices observability. This guide provides step-by-step instructions to integrate Kubernetes monitoring with OpenObserve for complete Kubernetes observability, container logs, and K8s metrics collection.

Overview

Kubernetes monitoring differs from traditional server-based monitoring. Kubernetes cluster monitoring requires insights into pods, containers, services, microservices interactions, Kubernetes events, container logs, and distributed traces for effective K8s monitoring.

OpenTelemetry provides a unified way to collect Kubernetes telemetry data, and OpenObserve makes it easy to ingest, store, visualize, and analyze Kubernetes metrics, logs, and traces for comprehensive Kubernetes monitoring and container observability with minimal setup.

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.
2. Go to Metrics section in Stream page, you will find bunch of K8s metrics

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

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