Monitoring Amazon EKS with Prometheus and Grafana (Without Helm)
Monitoring is an important part of DevOps and DevSecOps. In this post, I’ll share a simple way to monitor an Amazon EKS cluster using Prometheus and Grafana without using Helm.
This guide is based on my hands-on learning while working with Kubernetes.
Why Monitoring Is Important
Tools Used
Simple Architecture
Step 1: Create Monitoring Namespace
kubectl create namespace monitoring
Step 2: Deploy kube-state-metrics
This component gives details about:
Step 3: Deploy Node Exporter
Node Exporter runs on each worker node and collects:
Check status:
kubectl get pods -n monitoring -o wide
Step 4: Configure Prometheus
These labels help filtering in Grafana.
Step 5: Connect Grafana to Prometheus
Step 6: Import Dashboards
You can filter by:
What You Can Monitor:
What I Learned:
Conclusion:
This is a simple and effective way to monitor Amazon EKS without Helm.
It’s a great starting point for anyone learning Kubernetes monitoring.
Thanks for reading!
More...
Monitoring is an important part of DevOps and DevSecOps. In this post, I’ll share a simple way to monitor an Amazon EKS cluster using Prometheus and Grafana without using Helm.
This guide is based on my hands-on learning while working with Kubernetes.
Why Monitoring Is Important
- Monitoring helps us:
- Check cluster health
- Monitor node and pod resource usage
- Find issues early
- Improve system stability and security
Tools Used
- Amazon EKS
- Prometheus
- Grafana
- kube-state-metrics
- node-exporter
Helm is not used in this setup.
Simple Architecture
- Prometheus collects metrics from the EKS cluster
- Node Exporter collects node metrics
- kube-state-metrics provides Kubernetes object data
- Grafana displays metrics in dashboards
Step 1: Create Monitoring Namespace
kubectl create namespace monitoring
Step 2: Deploy kube-state-metrics
This component gives details about:
- Pods
- Namespaces
- Nodes
- Deployments
After deployment, verify:
kubectl get pods -n monitoring
Step 3: Deploy Node Exporter
Node Exporter runs on each worker node and collects:
- CPU
- Memory
- Disk metrics
Check status:
kubectl get pods -n monitoring -o wide
Step 4: Configure Prometheus
- Update Prometheus to scrape:
- Kubernetes nodes
- Pods
- kube-state-metrics
- kubelet metrics
Add labels: - cluster
- node
- namespace
- pod
These labels help filtering in Grafana.
Step 5: Connect Grafana to Prometheus
- Open Grafana
- Add Prometheus as a data source
- Save and test
Step 6: Import Dashboards
- Import Kubernetes dashboards to view:
- Cluster metrics
- Node usage
- Pod usage
You can filter by:
- Cluster
- Node
- Namespace
- Pod
What You Can Monitor:
- Cluster health
- Node CPU and memory
- Pod resource usage
- Pod restarts
What I Learned:
- Monitoring is essential for Kubernetes
- Prometheus and Grafana work well without Helm
- Labels are very useful for filtering metrics
- Good monitoring supports DevSecOps practices
Conclusion:
This is a simple and effective way to monitor Amazon EKS without Helm.
It’s a great starting point for anyone learning Kubernetes monitoring.
Thanks for reading!
More...