Newrelic Kubernetes Monitoring

Monitor your Kubernetes clusters with Newrelic in a HashiQube DevOps lab environment

🚀 Introduction

This lab provides hands-on experience with Newrelic Monitoring using Helm on Minikube. You'll learn how to set up comprehensive monitoring for your Kubernetes environment using Newrelic's powerful observability platform.

🛠️ Provision

Choose one of the following methods to set up your environment:

bash docker/docker.sh
bash minikube/minikube.sh

vagrant up --provision-with basetools,docker,docsify,minikube

docker compose exec hashiqube /bin/bash
bash hashiqube/basetools.sh
bash docker/docker.sh
bash docsify/docsify.sh
bash minikube/minikube.sh

After provisioning, you should be able to access the Minikube dashboard at: http://localhost:10888

Minikube Dashboard

💡 For more detailed information on running Minikube on HashiQube, visit: Minikube

📊 Newrelic Setup

Getting Started with Newrelic

Head over to http://www.newrelic.com and create a free demo account
Log in to your Newrelic account

Newrelic Logged in

Select your account and Kubernetes namespace for the integration

Newrelic Account and Namespace

Choose the Newrelic features for your integration

Newrelic Integration Features

🧩 Installation

Please visit https://one.newrelic.com/launcher/k8s-cluster-explorer-nerdlet.cluster-explorer-launcher and follow the steps there. At the end, you'll receive a Helm command similar to the one below.

Newrelic Integration Install with Helm

Installation Steps

SSH into your HashiQube environment:
```
vagrant ssh
```

Run the Helm command provided by Newrelic:

helm repo add newrelic https://helm-charts.newrelic.com && helm repo update && \
kubectl create namespace newrelic; 

helm upgrade --install newrelic-bundle newrelic/nri-bundle \
--set global.licenseKey=YOUR_NEWRELIC_LICENSE_KEY \
--set global.cluster=minikube \
--namespace=newrelic \
--set newrelic-infrastructure.privileged=true \
--set global.lowDataMode=true \
--set ksm.enabled=true \
--set kubeEvents.enabled=true \
--set prometheus.enabled=true \
--set logging.enabled=true \
--set newrelic-pixie.enabled=true \
--set newrelic-pixie.apiKey=YOUR_PIXIE_API_KEY \
--set pixie-chart.enabled=true \
--set pixie-chart.deployKey=YOUR_PIXIE_DEPLOY_KEY \
--set pixie-chart.clusterName=minikube

⚠️ Remember to replace YOUR_NEWRELIC_LICENSE_KEY, YOUR_PIXIE_API_KEY, and YOUR_PIXIE_DEPLOY_KEY with your actual keys.

🔍 Verification

To verify that all Newrelic components are running properly:

kubectl get po,svc -n newrelic

Example output:

NAME                                                          READY   STATUS                       RESTARTS      AGE
pod/newrelic-bundle-kube-state-metrics-654df84864-9hvk8       1/1     Running                      0             19m
pod/newrelic-bundle-newrelic-logging-xfs98                    1/1     Running                      0             19m
pod/newrelic-bundle-newrelic-pixie-jxfcv                      0/1     CreateContainerConfigError   0             19m
pod/newrelic-bundle-nri-kube-events-6c65bbbc8f-mjrvt          2/2     Running                      0             19m
pod/newrelic-bundle-nri-metadata-injection-675dd8f8f7-m5vcg   1/1     Running                      0             19m
pod/newrelic-bundle-nri-prometheus-64b9696b7b-xl9kk           1/1     Running                      0             19m
pod/newrelic-bundle-nrk8s-controlplane-lsx5t                  2/2     Running                      1 (17m ago)   19m
pod/newrelic-bundle-nrk8s-ksm-5d598df8d-v8rdv                 2/2     Running                      0             19m
pod/newrelic-bundle-nrk8s-kubelet-9xb68                       2/2     Running                      0             19m

NAME                                             TYPE        CLUSTER-IP      EXTERNAL-IP   PORT(S)    AGE
service/newrelic-bundle-kube-state-metrics       ClusterIP   10.107.30.223   <none>        8080/TCP   19m
service/newrelic-bundle-nri-metadata-injection   ClusterIP   10.96.68.196    <none>        443/TCP    19m

📈 Viewing Monitoring Data

Within a few minutes, you'll be able to see your Kubernetes clusters in the Newrelic interface:

Newrelic Kubernetes Integration Clusters

You can then explore the data streaming from your cluster:

Newrelic Kubernetes Summary 1

Newrelic Kubernetes Summary 2

⚙️ Known Issues

Pixie on ARM64 Architecture

There's a known issue when trying to run Pixie on ARM64 chipsets (like Apple M1). You may encounter the following error:

bash: line 225: /home/vagrant/bin/px: cannot execute binary file: Exec format error

This is due to compatibility issues with the ARM64 architecture. The Pixie binary is likely compiled for x86_64 architecture and won't run directly on ARM-based systems.

Newrelic Pixie Integration

Attempted Installation

bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://work.withpixie.ai/install.sh)"

Error Output

  ___  _       _
 | _ \(_)__ __(_) ___
 |  _/| |\ \ /| |/ -_)
 |_|  |_|/_\_\|_|\___|

==> Info:
Pixie gives engineers access to no-instrumentation, streaming &
unsampled auto-telemetry to debug performance issues in real-time,
More information at: https://www.pixielabs.ai.

# ... truncated output ...

==> Authenticating with Pixie Cloud:
bash: line 225: /home/vagrant/bin/px: cannot execute binary file: Exec format error

FAILED to authenticate with Pixie cloud. 
  You can try this step yourself by running px auth login.
  For help, please contact [email protected] or join our community slack/github"

# ... truncated output ...