Kubernetes cluster receiver 🔗

The Kubernetes cluster receiver collects cluster metrics using the Kubernetes API server. You can use a single instance of this receiver to monitor an entire Kubernetes cluster. The supported pipeline type is metrics. To filter in or out other Kubernetes elements, such as containers, pods, nodes, namespaces, or clusters, use the Filter processor instead. Learn more at Filter processor. See Process your data with pipelines for more information on the different types of pipelines.

Kubernetes version 1.21 and higher is compatible with the Kubernetes navigator. Using lower versions of Kubernetes is not supported for this receiver and might result in the navigator not displaying all clusters.

Note

This receiver replaces the kubernetes-cluster Smart Agent monitor.

Get started 🔗

By default, the Kubernetes cluster receiver is already activated in the Helm chart of the Splunk OpenTelemetry Collectors. See Configure the Collector for Kubernetes with Helm for more information, including the default Collected metrics and dimensions for Kubernetes.

To activate the Kubernetes cluster receiver manually in the Collector configuration, add k8s_cluster to the receivers section of your configuration file, as shown in the following example:

receivers:
  k8s_cluster:
    auth_type: kubeConfig
    collection_interval: 30s
    node_conditions_to_report: ["Ready", "MemoryPressure"]
    allocatable_types_to_report: ["cpu","memory"]
    metadata_exporters: [signalfx]

To complete the configuration, include the receiver in the metrics pipeline of the service section of your configuration file. For example:

service:
  pipelines:
    metrics:
      receivers: [k8s_cluster]

Sync metadata_exporters 🔗

Use metadata_exporters as a list of metadata exporters to sync with metadata collected by the Kubernetes cluster receiver. For example:

receivers:
  k8s_cluster:
    auth_type: serviceAccount
    metadata_exporters:
    - signalfx

Exporters specified in this list need to implement the following interface. If an exporter doesn’t implement the interface, startup fails.

type MetadataExporter interface {
  ConsumeMetadata(metadata []*MetadataUpdate) error
}

type MetadataUpdate struct {
  ResourceIDKey string
  ResourceID    ResourceID
  MetadataDelta
}

type MetadataDelta struct {
  MetadataToAdd    map[string]string
  MetadataToRemove map[string]string
  MetadataToUpdate map[string]string
}

Set node_conditions_to_report 🔗

Use the following configuration to have the k8s_cluster receiver emit two metrics, k8s.node.condition_ready and k8s.node.condition_memory_pressure, one for each condition in the configuration:

# ...
k8s_cluster:
  node_conditions_to_report:
    - Ready
    - MemoryPressure
# ...

The value is 1 if the ConditionStatus for the corresponding Condition is True, 0 if it’s False, and -1 if it’s Unknown. To learn more, search for “Conditions” in the Kubernetes documentation.

Settings 🔗

The following table shows the configuration options for the receiver:

Metrics 🔗

Caution

The SignalFx exporter excludes some available metrics by default. Learn more about default metric filters in List of metrics excluded by default. See Collected metrics and dimensions for Kubernetes to see how the Collector processes Kubernetes metrics.

The following metrics, resource attributes, and attributes are available. For more information, including which resource attributes are included by default, refer to Kubernetes Cluster receiver metadata in GitHub.

Activate or deactivate specific metrics 🔗

You can activate or deactivate specific metrics by setting the enabled field in the metrics section for each metric. For example:

receivers:
  samplereceiver:
    metrics:
      metric-one:
        enabled: true
      metric-two:
        enabled: false

The following is an example of host metrics receiver configuration with activated metrics:

receivers:
  hostmetrics:
    scrapers:
      process:
        metrics:
          process.cpu.utilization:
            enabled: true

Note

Deactivated metrics aren’t sent to Splunk Observability Cloud.

Billing 🔗

If you’re in a MTS-based subscription, all metrics count towards metrics usage.
If you’re in a host-based plan, metrics listed as active (Active: Yes) on this document are considered default and are included free of charge.

Learn more at Infrastructure Monitoring subscription usage (Host and metric plans).

Troubleshooting 🔗

If you are a Splunk Observability Cloud customer and are not able to see your data in Splunk Observability Cloud, you can get help in the following ways.

Available to Splunk Observability Cloud customers

Submit a case in the Splunk Support Portal .
Contact Splunk Support .

Available to prospective customers and free trial users

Ask a question and get answers through community support at Splunk Answers .
Join the Splunk #observability user group Slack channel to communicate with customers, partners, and Splunk employees worldwide. To join, see Chat groups in the Get Started with Splunk Community manual.

This page was last updated on Feb 17, 2025.

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