Deploying Explorer in Kubernetes

Create a monitoring namespace

It is a good practice to keep all monitoring resources in a separate namespace. To create a namespace run the following command:

kubectl create namespace monitoring

(If you already have a namespace for monitoring, you can skip this step)

Create a deployment and service configuration

In order to deploy Explorer, we need it to successfully connect to Prometheus and be made accessible from outside the cluster. To do that we will create a deployment and a service configuration.

As the configuration is quite simple we keep it in a single file, but it is also possible to split it into two files.

Create a file named explorer.yaml with the following content:

apiVersion: apps/v1
kind: Deployment
metadata:
  name: explorer
  namespace: monitoring
  labels:
    app: explorer
spec:
  selector:
    matchLabels:
      app: explorer
  replicas: 1
  template:
    metadata:
      labels:
        app: explorer
    spec:
      containers:
      - name: explorer
        image: autometrics/am-proxy:latest
        imagePullPolicy: IfNotPresent
        env:
        - name: PROMETHEUS_URL
          value: http://<prometheus_service_name>.<namespace>.svc.cluster.local
---
apiVersion: v1
kind: Service
metadata:
  name: explorer
  namespace: monitoring
spec:
  selector:
    app: explorer
  type: LoadBalancer
  ports:
    - port: 6789
      targetPort: 6789 # Explorer default port

Note: the LoadBalancer configuration will vary depending on the Kubernetes provider and will need to be adapted accordingly. The above configuration is for a Kubernetes cluster running locally with minikube (opens in a new tab).

Apply the configuration

To apply the configuration run the following command:

kubectl apply -f explorer.yaml

Verify the deployment

To verify that the deployment was successful, navigate to the URL of the service. If the deployment was successful, you should see the Explorer UI.