Master Kubernetes K8s/K3s Monitoring With Nagios XI
Kubernetes has become the de facto standard for managing containerized applications. It automates key tasks such as deploying, scaling, and operating application containers, helping to simplify the running of complex, distributed systems reliably.
A popular request from our users has been for a Kubernetes monitoring method, and in Nagios XI 2024R2, we were pleased to add a brand-new Premium wizard, available as long as you have active Maintenance benefits. In this article, we’ll discuss initial setup, outline the capabilities of the wizard, and provide links to the full technical documentation you can follow to start monitoring Kubernetes with Nagios XI right away.
How it Works and Initial Setup
K8s/K3s monitoring with Nagios XI is accomplished using the Nagios Cross Platform Agent (NCPA), installed on the control-plane/master node. A special check_kubernetes.sh plugin is used to fetch data, and you can choose between multiple methods of allowing NCPA to connect, including a service account and kubectl.
You can follow this guide to complete the necessary initial setup steps:
Setting Up Kubernetes Monitoring with NCPA
Discover the Wizard
Once you’ve got the initial setup taken care of, you can then head to Configure > Configuration Wizards and find the Kubernetes with NCPA Wizard. The step-by-step wizard enables you to quickly configure monitoring of a variety of meaningful metrics, including:
- Nodes Active
- Daemon Sets
- Deployments
- Jobs Failed
- Pod Restarts
- Replica Sets
- Stateful Sets
- TLS
- PVC (Persistent Volume Claims)
- Unbound PVS (Unbound Persistent Volumes)
Here’s a look at some K8s metrics being actively monitored after running the wizard:
You can find complete details on using the wizard in this guide:
Monitoring Kubernetes Clusters with Nagios XI and NCPA
The Docker Wizard
Since K8s is often used to orchestrate Docker, we’ll also mention the Docker Wizard (another Premium feature), which provides a way to monitor your containers. Available metrics include existing containers, running containers, healthy containers, CPU usage, and Memory usage. Checks can be executed either via NCPA or the cURL API. You can learn more about Docker monitoring here:
How to Easily Monitor Docker Containers with Nagios XI
Nagios XI Business Process Intelligence (BPI)
Also worth mentioning is BPI, which provides a way for you to combine hosts and services you monitor into logical groups and then alert intelligently based on both the overall percent health of the group and of ‘essential members’ (which must be in an OK state for the group to function). BPI is of great value when monitoring clustered applications.
What’s New in 2024R2
If you’d like to find out more about the other great features we added in XI 2024R2, including SSO, the Zabbix Agent Wizard, and more, check out this article:
