developing-prometheus-rules-and-grafana-dashboards.md

Developing Prometheus Rules and Grafana Dashboards

kube-prometheus ships with a set of default Prometheus rules and Grafana dashboards. At some point one might like to extend them, the purpose of this document is to explain how to do this.

All manifests of kube-prometheus are generated using jsonnet and Prometheus rules and Grafana dashboards in specific follow the Prometheus Monitoring Mixins proposal.

For both the Prometheus rules and the Grafana dashboards Kubernetes ConfigMaps are generated within kube-prometheus. In order to add additional rules and dashboards simply merge them onto the existing json objects. This document illustrates examples for rules as well as dashboards.

As a basis, all examples in this guide are based on the base example of the kube-prometheus readme:

local kp = (import 'kube-prometheus/kube-prometheus.libsonnet') + {
  _config+:: {
    namespace: 'monitoring',
  },
};

{ ['00namespace-' + name]: kp.kubePrometheus[name] for name in std.objectFields(kp.kubePrometheus) } +
{ ['0prometheus-operator-' + name]: kp.prometheusOperator[name] for name in std.objectFields(kp.prometheusOperator) } +
{ ['node-exporter-' + name]: kp.nodeExporter[name] for name in std.objectFields(kp.nodeExporter) } +
{ ['kube-state-metrics-' + name]: kp.kubeStateMetrics[name] for name in std.objectFields(kp.kubeStateMetrics) } +
{ ['alertmanager-' + name]: kp.alertmanager[name] for name in std.objectFields(kp.alertmanager) } +
{ ['prometheus-' + name]: kp.prometheus[name] for name in std.objectFields(kp.prometheus) } +
{ ['grafana-' + name]: kp.grafana[name] for name in std.objectFields(kp.grafana) }

Prometheus rules

Alerting rules

According to the Prometheus Monitoring Mixins proposal Prometheus alerting rules are under the key prometheusAlerts in the top level object, so in order to add an additional alerting rule, we can simply merge an extra rule into the existing object.

The format is exactly the Prometheus format, so there should be no changes necessary should you have existing rules that you want to include.

Note that alerts can just as well be included into this file, using the jsonnet import function. In this example it is just inlined in order to demonstrate their use in a single file.

local kp = (import 'kube-prometheus/kube-prometheus.libsonnet') + {
  _config+:: {
    namespace: 'monitoring',
  },
  prometheusAlerts+:: {
    groups+: [
      {
        name: 'example-group',
        rules: [
          {
            alert: 'DeadMansSwitch',
            expr: 'vector(1)',
            labels: {
              severity: 'none',
            },
            annotations: {
              description: 'This is a DeadMansSwitch meant to ensure that the entire alerting pipeline is functional.',
            },
          },
        ],
      },
    ],
  },
};

{ ['00namespace-' + name]: kp.kubePrometheus[name] for name in std.objectFields(kp.kubePrometheus) } +
{ ['0prometheus-operator-' + name]: kp.prometheusOperator[name] for name in std.objectFields(kp.prometheusOperator) } +
{ ['node-exporter-' + name]: kp.nodeExporter[name] for name in std.objectFields(kp.nodeExporter) } +
{ ['kube-state-metrics-' + name]: kp.kubeStateMetrics[name] for name in std.objectFields(kp.kubeStateMetrics) } +
{ ['alertmanager-' + name]: kp.alertmanager[name] for name in std.objectFields(kp.alertmanager) } +
{ ['prometheus-' + name]: kp.prometheus[name] for name in std.objectFields(kp.prometheus) } +
{ ['grafana-' + name]: kp.grafana[name] for name in std.objectFields(kp.grafana) }

Recording rules

In order to add a recording rule, simply do the same with the prometheusRules field.

Note that rules can just as well be included into this file, using the jsonnet import function. In this example it is just inlined in order to demonstrate their use in a single file.

local kp = (import 'kube-prometheus/kube-prometheus.libsonnet') + {
  _config+:: {
    namespace: 'monitoring',
  },
  prometheusRules+:: {
    groups+: [
      {
        name: 'example-group',
        rules: [
          {
            record: 'some_recording_rule_name',
            expr: 'vector(1)',
          },
        ],
      },
    ],
  },
};

{ ['00namespace-' + name]: kp.kubePrometheus[name] for name in std.objectFields(kp.kubePrometheus) } +
{ ['0prometheus-operator-' + name]: kp.prometheusOperator[name] for name in std.objectFields(kp.prometheusOperator) } +
{ ['node-exporter-' + name]: kp.nodeExporter[name] for name in std.objectFields(kp.nodeExporter) } +
{ ['kube-state-metrics-' + name]: kp.kubeStateMetrics[name] for name in std.objectFields(kp.kubeStateMetrics) } +
{ ['alertmanager-' + name]: kp.alertmanager[name] for name in std.objectFields(kp.alertmanager) } +
{ ['prometheus-' + name]: kp.prometheus[name] for name in std.objectFields(kp.prometheus) } +
{ ['grafana-' + name]: kp.grafana[name] for name in std.objectFields(kp.grafana) }

Pre-rendered rules

We acknowledge, that users may need to transition existing rules, and therefore allow an option to add additional pre-rendered rules. This can be done simply by importing the existing rules in the Prometheus rule format using the jsonnet function importstr. In this example we are importing a provided example rule.

local kp = (import 'kube-prometheus/kube-prometheus.libsonnet') + {
  _config+:: {
    namespace: 'monitoring',
    prometheus+:: {
      renderedRules: {
        'example.rules.yaml': (importstr 'example.rules.yaml'),
      },
    },
  },
};

{ ['00namespace-' + name]: kp.kubePrometheus[name] for name in std.objectFields(kp.kubePrometheus) } +
{ ['0prometheus-operator-' + name]: kp.prometheusOperator[name] for name in std.objectFields(kp.prometheusOperator) } +
{ ['node-exporter-' + name]: kp.nodeExporter[name] for name in std.objectFields(kp.nodeExporter) } +
{ ['kube-state-metrics-' + name]: kp.kubeStateMetrics[name] for name in std.objectFields(kp.kubeStateMetrics) } +
{ ['alertmanager-' + name]: kp.alertmanager[name] for name in std.objectFields(kp.alertmanager) } +
{ ['prometheus-' + name]: kp.prometheus[name] for name in std.objectFields(kp.prometheus) } +
{ ['grafana-' + name]: kp.grafana[name] for name in std.objectFields(kp.grafana) }

Dashboards

Dashboards can either be added using jsonnet or simply a pre-rendered json dashboard.

Jsonnet dashboard

We recommend using the grafonnet library for jsonnet, which gives you a simple DSL to generate Grafana dashboards. Following the Prometheus Monitoring Mixins proposal additional dashboards are added to the grafanaDashboards key, located in the top level object. To add new jsonnet dashboards, simply add one.

Note that dashboards can just as well be included into this file, using the jsonnet import function. In this example it is just inlined in order to demonstrate their use in a single file.

local grafana = import 'grafonnet/grafana.libsonnet';
local dashboard = grafana.dashboard;
local row = grafana.row;
local prometheus = grafana.prometheus;
local template = grafana.template;
local graphPanel = grafana.graphPanel;

local kp = (import 'kube-prometheus/kube-prometheus.libsonnet') + {
  _config+:: {
    namespace: 'monitoring',
  },
  grafanaDashboards+:: {
    'my-dashboard.json':
      dashboard.new('My Dashboard')
      .addTemplate(
        {
          current: {
            text: 'Prometheus',
            value: 'Prometheus',
          },
          hide: 0,
          label: null,
          name: 'datasource',
          options: [],
          query: 'prometheus',
          refresh: 1,
          regex: '',
          type: 'datasource',
        },
      )
      .addRow(
        row.new()
        .addPanel(graphPanel.new('My Panel', span=6, datasource='$datasource')
                  .addTarget(prometheus.target('vector(1)')))
      ),
  },
};

{ ['00namespace-' + name]: kp.kubePrometheus[name] for name in std.objectFields(kp.kubePrometheus) } +
{ ['0prometheus-operator-' + name]: kp.prometheusOperator[name] for name in std.objectFields(kp.prometheusOperator) } +
{ ['node-exporter-' + name]: kp.nodeExporter[name] for name in std.objectFields(kp.nodeExporter) } +
{ ['kube-state-metrics-' + name]: kp.kubeStateMetrics[name] for name in std.objectFields(kp.kubeStateMetrics) } +
{ ['alertmanager-' + name]: kp.alertmanager[name] for name in std.objectFields(kp.alertmanager) } +
{ ['prometheus-' + name]: kp.prometheus[name] for name in std.objectFields(kp.prometheus) } +
{ ['grafana-' + name]: kp.grafana[name] for name in std.objectFields(kp.grafana) }

Pre-rendered Grafana dashboards

As jsonnet is a superset of json, the jsonnet import function can be used to include Grafana dashboard json blobs. In this example we are importing a provided example dashboard.

local kp = (import 'kube-prometheus/kube-prometheus.libsonnet') + {
  _config+:: {
    namespace: 'monitoring',
  },
  grafanaDashboards+:: {
    'my-dashboard.json': (import 'example-grafana-dashboard.json'),
  },
};

{ ['00namespace-' + name]: kp.kubePrometheus[name] for name in std.objectFields(kp.kubePrometheus) } +
{ ['0prometheus-operator-' + name]: kp.prometheusOperator[name] for name in std.objectFields(kp.prometheusOperator) } +
{ ['node-exporter-' + name]: kp.nodeExporter[name] for name in std.objectFields(kp.nodeExporter) } +
{ ['kube-state-metrics-' + name]: kp.kubeStateMetrics[name] for name in std.objectFields(kp.kubeStateMetrics) } +
{ ['alertmanager-' + name]: kp.alertmanager[name] for name in std.objectFields(kp.alertmanager) } +
{ ['prometheus-' + name]: kp.prometheus[name] for name in std.objectFields(kp.prometheus) } +
{ ['grafana-' + name]: kp.grafana[name] for name in std.objectFields(kp.grafana) }