---
title: "Deploying a monitoring stack (Prometheus & Grafana) in a Kubernetes cluster in MRS"
description: "Find out how to deploy monitoring applications (Prometheus & Grafana) in a Kubernetes cluster and display metrics and dashboards on a Managed Rancher Service"
url: https://docs.ovhcloud.com/it/guides/public-cloud/containers-orchestration/managed-rancher-service/deploy-monitoring-prometheus-grafana-metrics
lang: it
lastUpdated: 2024-09-11
---
# Deploying a monitoring stack (Prometheus & Grafana) in a Kubernetes cluster in MRS

## Objective

Managed Rancher Service by OVHcloud provides a powerful platform for orchestrating Kubernetes clusters seamlessly.

This guide will show you how to deploy, in Rancher, a monitoring stack (Prometheus & Grafana) to monitor your Kubernetes cluster.

The `rancher-monitoring` operator is powered by [Prometheus](https://prometheus.io/), [Grafana](https://grafana.com/grafana/), [Alertmanager](https://prometheus.io/docs/alerting/latest/alertmanager/), the [Prometheus Operator](https://github.com/prometheus-operator/prometheus-operator), and the [Prometheus adapter](https://github.com/DirectXMan12/k8s-prometheus-adapter).

The monitoring application allows you to:

- Monitor the state and processes of your cluster nodes, Kubernetes components, and software deployments
- Define alerts based on metrics collected via Prometheus
- Create custom Grafana dashboards
- Configure alert-based notifications via Email, Slack, PagerDuty, etc. using Prometheus Alertmanager
- Define precomputed, frequently needed or computationally expensive expressions as new time series based on metrics collected via Prometheus
- Expose collected metrics from Prometheus to the Kubernetes Custom Metrics API via Prometheus Adapter for use in HPA

![Monitoring stack](/images/public-cloud/containers-orchestration/managed-rancher-service/deploy-monitoring-prometheus-grafana-metrics/monitoring-stack.png)
## Requirements

- A [Public Cloud project](https://www.ovhcloud.com/it/public-cloud/) in your OVHcloud account
- An OVHcloud Managed Rancher Service (see the [creating a Managed Rancher Service](/it/guides/public-cloud/containers-orchestration/managed-rancher-service/creation.md) guide for more information)
- An access to the Rancher UI to operate it (see the [connecting to the Rancher UI](/it/guides/public-cloud/containers-orchestration/managed-rancher-service/creation.md) guide for more information)
- A Kubernetes cluster created or imported in Rancher

## Instructions

In this guide you will deploy the monitoring Helm chart that is based on the upstream [kube-prometheus-stack chart](https://github.com/prometheus-community/helm-charts/tree/main/charts/kube-prometheus-stack). The chart deploys [Prometheus Operator](https://github.com/prometheus-operator/prometheus-operator) and its CRDs along with [Grafana](https://github.com/grafana/helm-charts/tree/main/charts/grafana), [Prometheus Adapter](https://github.com/prometheus-community/helm-charts/tree/main/charts/prometheus-adapter) and additional charts / Kubernetes manifests to gather metrics. It allows users to monitor their Kubernetes clusters, view metrics in Grafana dashboards, and set up alerts and notifications.

### Install the monitoring stack (Prometheus & Grafana)

Log in to your Managed Rancher Service UI.

![OVHcloud Managed Rancher Service UI](/images/public-cloud/containers-orchestration/managed-rancher-service/deploy-monitoring-prometheus-grafana-metrics/rancher-ui.png)
Click on the name of your cluster.

![OVHcloud Managed Rancher Service Cluster](/images/public-cloud/containers-orchestration/managed-rancher-service/deploy-monitoring-prometheus-grafana-metrics/rancher-cluster.png)
Click on `Install Monitoring
`.
![OVHcloud Managed Rancher Service Cluster](/images/public-cloud/containers-orchestration/managed-rancher-service/deploy-monitoring-prometheus-grafana-metrics/rancher-cluster-tools.png)
Click on `Install
` in the **Monitoring**
 app to install Prometheus.
![OVHcloud Managed Rancher Service Cluster](/images/public-cloud/containers-orchestration/managed-rancher-service/deploy-monitoring-prometheus-grafana-metrics/rancher-install-prom.png)
You can customize Helm chart options if you want by ticking the `Customize Helm options before install` checkbox.

Click the `Next
` button to jump into the second step.
Choose the `Cluster Type`.

:::warning
Select `K3s` or `RKE2` if you installed the Kubernetes cluster nodes with Rancher or `Other` for a MKS cluster.
:::

![OVHcloud Managed Rancher Service RKE2 Cluster Type](/images/public-cloud/containers-orchestration/managed-rancher-service/deploy-monitoring-prometheus-grafana-metrics/rancher-rke2.png)
In the `Prometheus` tab you can configure scrapping intervals, retention and resource memory and limits.

![OVHcloud Managed Rancher Service RKE2 Cluster Type](/images/public-cloud/containers-orchestration/managed-rancher-service/deploy-monitoring-prometheus-grafana-metrics/rancher-prometheus.png)
In the `Alerting` tab you can configure and deploy Alertmanager.

![OVHcloud Managed Rancher Service Alertmanager](/images/public-cloud/containers-orchestration/managed-rancher-service/deploy-monitoring-prometheus-grafana-metrics/rancher-alertmanager.png)
In the `Grafana` tab you can view the chart info and configure Grafana storage.

![OVHcloud Managed Rancher Service Grafana](/images/public-cloud/containers-orchestration/managed-rancher-service/deploy-monitoring-prometheus-grafana-metrics/rancher-grafana.png)
Click the `Install
` button to install the monitoring stack.
The Logs will be displayed and showing you that the Helm chart has been installed.

![OVHcloud Managed Rancher Service Grafana](/images/public-cloud/containers-orchestration/managed-rancher-service/deploy-monitoring-prometheus-grafana-metrics/rancher-logs.png)
Click the `Kubectl Shell` icon to open a terminal inside Rancher and then execute the following command to list the monitoring pods installed:

```bash
kubectl get po -n cattle-monitoring-system
```

![OVHcloud Managed Rancher Service Monitoring Pods](/images/public-cloud/containers-orchestration/managed-rancher-service/deploy-monitoring-prometheus-grafana-metrics/rancher-monito-pods.png)
### View metrics and Grafana dashboards

By default, the monitoring application deploys:

- Grafana dashboards (curated by the kube-prometheus project) onto a cluster.
- An Alertmanager UI and a Prometheus UI.
- Exporters (such as node-exporter and kube-state-metrics).
- Some alerts by default.

On the Rancher UI, click the `Cluster Management
` menu, then click the `Explore
` button for the cluster which metrics you want to visualize.
![OVHcloud Managed Rancher Service Explore Cluster](/images/public-cloud/containers-orchestration/managed-rancher-service/deploy-monitoring-prometheus-grafana-metrics/rancher-explore.png)
In the left navigation bar, click on `Monitoring
`.
![OVHcloud Managed Rancher Service Monitoring Menu](/images/public-cloud/containers-orchestration/managed-rancher-service/deploy-monitoring-prometheus-grafana-metrics/rancher-monitoring-menu.png)
In this page you can see the links to the Alertmanager, Grafana dashboard and also active Prometheus alerts.

![OVHcloud Managed Rancher Service Monitoring](/images/public-cloud/containers-orchestration/managed-rancher-service/deploy-monitoring-prometheus-grafana-metrics/rancher-monitoring.png)
By clicking on the Grafana link you can see the Grafana dashboards:

![OVHcloud Managed Rancher Grafana](/images/public-cloud/containers-orchestration/managed-rancher-service/deploy-monitoring-prometheus-grafana-metrics/grafana.png)
You can also execute PromQL queries.

Without doing anything on your side, several built-in metrics are already available. You can test them by typing `sum(kube_pod_owner{job="kube-state-metrics"}) by (namespace)` in the search bar.

Click the `Execute
` button to determine if the Kubernetes metrics are visible:
![OVHcloud Managed Rancher Grafana](/images/public-cloud/containers-orchestration/managed-rancher-service/deploy-monitoring-prometheus-grafana-metrics/promql.png)
Thanks to this PromQL query you can list the number of pods per namespace in your Kubernetes cluster.

### Known issues

In the installation view, you can have a warning message: "This chart requires 4.5 CPU cores, but the cluster only has xx.x available":

![OVHcloud Managed Rancher Service Error CPU Core Insufficient](/images/public-cloud/containers-orchestration/managed-rancher-service/deploy-monitoring-prometheus-grafana-metrics/error-cpu-core-insufficient.png)
If it's the case, you can add more nodes in your Kubernetes cluster and try the installation of the monitoring stack.

## Go further

- Follow the Rancher official documentation to know more about [monitoring and alerting](https://ranchermanager.docs.rancher.com/v2.5/explanations/integrations-in-rancher/monitoring-and-alerting).

- When the monitoring application is installed, you will be able to [edit components in the Rancher UI](https://ranchermanager.docs.rancher.com/v2.5/explanations/integrations-in-rancher/monitoring-and-alerting/how-monitoring-works#components-exposed-in-the-rancher-ui).

- To have an overview of OVHcloud Managed Rancher Service, you can go to the [OVHcloud Managed Rancher Service page](https://www.ovhcloud.com/it/public-cloud/managed-rancher-service/).

- If you need training or technical assistance to implement our solutions, contact your sales representative or click on [this link](https://www.ovhcloud.com/it/professional-services/) to get a quote and ask our Professional Services experts for assisting you on your specific use case of your project.

- Our team remains available on our dedicated Discord Channel, do not hesitate to join and reach us : [https://discord.gg/ovhcloud](https://discord.gg/ovhcloud). Ask questions, provide feedback and interact directly with the team that builds our Container and Orchestration services.

- Join our [community of users](https://community.ovhcloud.com/).