How to Monitor AKS Cluster using Azure Monitor and Grafana | Setup monitoring on AKS Cluster using Azure Log Analytics Workspace and Grafana

We can monitor AKS cluster using many ways. We will monitor AKS cluster using Azure Log Analytics workspace which collects log data and metrics from AKS cluster and stores them inside workspace. We will use Grafana for visualizing the data from Log Analytics workspace.

Watch steps in YouTube channel:

Different ways of Monitoring AKS Cluster

• Monitoring AKS cluster using Azure Log Analytics Workspace and Grafana
• Monitoring AKS cluster using Prometheus/Grafana
• Monitoring AKS cluster using Azure Monitor

What is Azure Log Analytics Workspace?

Azure Log Analytics workspace is a logical storage unit in Azure where all log data generated by Azure Monitors are stored.  Log Analytics workspace collects log data from various Azure resources such as Azure Virtual machine or Azure Kubernetes Service. You can think of the workspace as a folder where all your monitoring data is stored and managed.

What is Grafana?

• Grafana is an open source visualization and analytics tool. 
• It allows you to query, visualize, alert on, and explore your metrics no matter where they are stored.

Pre-requisites:

• Azure subscription, click here if you don't have one.
• Install Azure CLI on your local machine
• Install Helm
• Install kubectl

You can also monitor existing AKS cluster as well, but make sure monitoring is enabled. once enabled, you can associate default workspace to AKS cluster or create a new workspace, associate it to cluster.

But we will try creating a new AKS cluster and monitor.

Create AKS Cluster with Monitoring Enabled

Make sure you are login to Azure portal first.

az login

enter your Microsoft credentials.

Create a resource group first

az group create --name myResourceGroup --location southcentralus

Create Log Analytics workspace

az monitor log-analytics workspace create --resource-group myResourceGroup \
                                           --workspace-name my-loganalytics-workspace \
                                           --query id \
                                           -o tsv

Output of the above command will display log analytics Id which is needed for next command while creating AKS cluster. we will be associating Log Analytics Workspace ID with AKS Cluster during creation.

Create AKS cluster with 2 worker nodes with Monitoring Enabled

az aks create --resource-group myResourceGroup --name myAKSCluster --node-count 2 --enable-addons monitoring --workspace-resource-id /subscriptions/XXXXX/resourceGroups/myResourceGroup/providers/Microsoft.OperationalInsights/workspaces/aks-loganalytics-workspace

Verify all the resources are created in Azure Portal

Click on resource group name, you will see AKS cluster, log analytics workspace

Display Details of Cluster

az aks show --name myAKSCluster --resource-group myResourceGroup

The above command will display AKS Cluster details.

Connect to the cluster

az aks get-credentials --resource-group myResourceGroup --name myAKSCluster --overwrite-existing

To verify the connection to your cluster, use the kubectl get command to return a list of the cluster nodes.

kubectl get nodes

 

 

Permission needed (SPN) to pull metrics Data from Azure Log Analytics 

We need to create Service principal(SPN) and assign Log Analytics Reader Role on the AKS Cluster ResourceGroup. Execute below command to first get resource group ID where AKS cluster is running.

First Let's get Resource Group ID 

az group show --name  myResourceGroup --query id --output tsv

output of the above command will be resource group ID. 

Create a Service Principal and Assign Role

az ad sp create-for-rbac --role="Log Analytics Reader" --scopes="/subscriptions/xxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxx/resourceGroups/myResourceGroup"

Creating 'Log Analytics Reader' role assignment under scope '/subscriptions/XXX/resourceGroups/myResourceGroup'

{
  "appId": "xxx",
  "displayName": "azure-cli-2023-04-12-22-06-28",
  "password": "xxx",
  "tenant": "xxx"
}

Note all the information above and save it.

Grafana Installation steps on AKS cluster using Helm

Install Grafana

Once Helm is set up properly, add the repo as follows:

helm repo add grafana https://grafana.github.io/helm-charts

helm search repo grafana

Create Monitoring namespace

kubectl create namespace monitoring

Install Grafana alone(NOT kube-prometheus-stack)

helm install stable grafana/grafana -n monitoring

Lets check if grafana pods are running

kubectl get pods -n monitoring

Expose Grafana

# Port forward the Grafana service

kubectl port-forward  -n monitoring stable-grafana-XXX 3000

How to get Grafana admin password by querying pod

kubectl get secret --namespace monitoring stable-grafana -o jsonpath="{.data.admin-password}" | base64 --decode ; echo

Login to Grafana

Now Open localhost:3000 in browser to access Grafana

UserName: admin

Password: <from the above command>

Create Data Source in Grafana

Go to Grafana, configuration and click Data Sources. Click on Add Data Source and search for Azure Monitor.

Enter tenant id, app id and secret information. click on Load subscriptions. Click on Save and Test.

Create Dashboard in Grafana

In Grafana, we can create various kinds of dashboards as per our needs.

How to Create Azure Monitor For Containers Dashboard?

Click '+' button on left panel and select ‘Import’.

Enter 10956 dashboard id under Grafana.com Dashboard.

Click ‘Load’.

Click ‘Import’.

This will show monitoring dashboard for all cluster nodes

How to Create POD Metrics for AKS Dashboard?

Click '+' button on left panel and select ‘Import’.

Enter 14891 dashboard id under Grafana.com Dashboard.

Click ‘Load’.

This will show monitoring dashboard for all pods, you can also select namespaces as well.

Clean up Resources

Let's see how to clean up the resources that were created. We can use the az group delete command to remove the resource group, AKS cluster, and all related resources. 

az group delete --name myResourceGroup --yes --no-wait

Click here for Script for Creating AKS cluster with Monitoring Enabled.