KubeSphere Alerting and Notification

What are KubeSphere Alerting and Notification

Alerting and Notification are two important building blocks of observability, closely related monitoring and logging. The alerting system in KubeSphere, coupled with the proactive failure notification system, allows users to know activities of interest based on alert policies. When a predefined threshold of a certain metric is reached, an alert will be sent to preconfigured recipients, the notification method of which can be set by yourself, including Email, WeChat Work and Slack. With a highly functional alerting and notification system in place, you can quickly identify and resolve potential issues in advance before they affect your business.

For more information, see Alerting Policy and Message.

Note

It is recommended that you enable Alerting and Notification together so that users can receive notifications of alerts in time.

Enable Alerting and Notification before Installation

Installing on Linux

When you install KubeSphere on Linux, you need to create a configuration file, which lists all KubeSphere components.

  1. In the tutorial of Installing KubeSphere on Linux, you create a default file config-sample.yaml. Modify the file by executing the following command:
  1. vi config-sample.yaml

Note

If you adopt All-in-one Installation, you do not need to create a config-sample.yaml file as you can create a cluster directly. Generally, the all-in-one mode is for users who are new to KubeSphere and look to get familiar with the system. If you want to enable Alerting and Notification in this mode (e.g. for testing purpose), refer to the following section to see how Alerting and Notification can be installed after installation.

  1. In this file, navigate to alerting and notification and change false to true for enabled. Save the file after you finish.
  1. alerting:
  2.     enabled: true # Change "false" to "true"
  3. notification:
  4.     enabled: true # Change "false" to "true"
  1. Create a cluster using the configuration file:
  1. ./kk create cluster -f config-sample.yaml

Installing on Kubernetes

When you install KubeSphere on Kubernetes, you need to download the file cluster-configuration.yaml for cluster setting. If you want to install Alerting and Notification, do not use kubectl apply -f directly for this file.

  1. In the tutorial of Installing KubeSphere on Kubernetes, you execute kubectl apply -f first for the file kubesphere-installer.yaml. After that, to enable Alerting and Notification, create a local file cluster-configuration.yaml.
  1. vi cluster-configuration.yaml
  1. Copy all the content in the file cluster-configuration.yaml and paste it to the local file just created.
  2. In this local cluster-configuration.yaml file, navigate to alerting and notification and enable them by changing false to true for enabled. Save the file after you finish.
  1. alerting:
  2.     enabled: true # Change "false" to "true"
  3. notification:
  4.     enabled: true # Change "false" to "true"
  1. Execute the following command to start installation:
  1. kubectl apply -f cluster-configuration.yaml

Enable Alerting and Notification after Installation

  1. Log in the console as admin. Click Platform in the top-left corner and select Clusters Management.

clusters-management

  1. Click CRDs and enter clusterconfiguration in the search bar. Click the result to view its detailed page.

Info

A Custom Resource Definition (CRD) allows users to create a new type of resources without adding another API server. They can use these resources like any other native Kubernetes objects.

  1. In Resource List, click the three dots on the right of ks-installer and select Edit YAML.

edit-yaml

  1. In this yaml file, navigate to alerting and notification and change false to true for enabled. After you finish, click Update in the bottom-right corner to save the configuration.
  1. alerting:
  2.     enabled: true # Change "false" to "true"
  3. notification:
  4.     enabled: true # Change "false" to "true"
  1. You can use the web kubectl to check the installation process by executing the following command:
  1. kubectl logs -n kubesphere-system $(kubectl get pod -n kubesphere-system -l app=ks-install -o jsonpath='{.items[0].metadata.name}') -f

Tip

You can find the web kubectl tool by clicking the hammer icon in the bottom-right corner of the console.

Verify the Installation of Component

If you can see Alerting Messages and Alerting Policies in the image below, it means the installation succeeds as the two parts won’t display until you install the component.

alerting

Execute the following command to check the status of pods:

  1. kubectl get pod -n kubesphere-alerting-system

The output may look as follows if the component runs successfully:

  1. NAME                                       READY   STATUS      RESTARTS   AGE
  2. alerting-client-744c794979-xvsbz           1/1     Running     2          36m
  3. alerting-db-ctrl-job-jwdsh                 0/1     Completed   0          36m
  4. alerting-db-init-job-sj2nv                 0/1     Completed   0          36m
  5. alerting-executor-59ff88f484-2l57d         2/2     Running     0          36m
  6. alerting-manager-5dc9d6cd46-jshkw          1/1     Running     0          36m
  7. alerting-watcher-dcb87b665-sm87b           1/1     Running     0          36m
  8. notification-db-ctrl-job-phxsx             0/1     Completed   3          36m
  9. notification-db-init-job-8q5rf             0/1     Completed   0          36m
  10. notification-deployment-748897cbdf-2djpr   1/1     Running     0          36m