Observe Helm Charts

This repository contains Helm charts for installing the telemetry agents required for Observe apps on Kubernetes. The current chart that should be used is agent. The other charts are deprecated and should not be used.

Quick Start

First, install and update the observe helm repository:

helm repo add observe https://observeinc.github.io/helm-charts
helm repo update

Namespace

We currently require that Observe charts are installed to an observe namespace. The namespace should further be annotated with a human-readable cluster name. Helm supports creating namespaces as a convenience feature, but does not support managing and configuring the namespace (that is, the --create-namespace option in helm install is equivalent to manually running kubectl create namespace). Thus it is recommended to manage the namespace externally to Helm. This can likely be done by following the same methodology you use to manage the creation of your Kubernetes clusters, and/or your other namespaces.

You can also manage the namespace manually using the following commands:

kubectl create namespace observe

Installing Agent stack

Creating the token secret

The first step is to provision an Observe Ingest Token and create a secret in the observe namespace.

  kubectl -n observe create secret generic agent-credentials --from-literal=OBSERVE_TOKEN=${YOUR_INGEST_TOKEN} --from-literal=TRACE_TOKEN=${YOUR_INGEST_TOKEN}

kubectl annotate secret agent-credentials -n observe \
  meta.helm.sh/release-name=observe-agent \
  meta.helm.sh/release-namespace=observe

kubectl label secret agent-credentials -n observe \
  app.kubernetes.io/managed-by=Helm

Install stack

After the secret is created, you can install the agent stack.

helm install observe-agent observe/agent -n observe \
--set observe.collectionEndpoint.value="${OBSERVE_COLLECTION_ENDPOINT}" \
--set cluster.name="${CLUSTER_NAME}" \


# store values for further configuration and upgrades
helm -n observe get values observe-agent -o yaml > observe-agent-values.yaml

Installing Traces

Traces and other app telemetry such as metrics can be sent to the forwarder daemonset that's installed as part of the agent stack. For more details please see the docs here

Sizing

For more details on default sizing and how to tune the services in the helm chart, please see the docs here.

Uninstall Stack

helm -n observe uninstall observe-agent

Build

Dependencies

Kind needs to be installed in order to build and test this repository:

https://kind.sigs.k8s.io/docs/user/quick-start/