Chapter 6. Enabling monitoring for user-defined projects
In OpenShift Container Platform 4.12, you can enable monitoring for user-defined projects in addition to the default platform monitoring. You can monitor your own projects in OpenShift Container Platform without the need for an additional monitoring solution. Using this feature centralizes monitoring for core platform components and user-defined projects.
Versions of Prometheus Operator installed using Operator Lifecycle Manager (OLM) are not compatible with user-defined monitoring. Therefore, custom Prometheus instances installed as a Prometheus custom resource (CR) managed by the OLM Prometheus Operator are not supported in OpenShift Container Platform.
6.1. Enabling monitoring for user-defined projects
Cluster administrators can enable monitoring for user-defined projects by setting the enableUserWorkload: true
field in the cluster monitoring ConfigMap
object.
In OpenShift Container Platform 4.12 you must remove any custom Prometheus instances before enabling monitoring for user-defined projects.
You must have access to the cluster as a user with the cluster-admin
cluster role to enable monitoring for user-defined projects in OpenShift Container Platform. Cluster administrators can then optionally grant users permission to configure the components that are responsible for monitoring user-defined projects.
Prerequisites
-
You have access to the cluster as a user with the
cluster-admin
cluster role. -
You have installed the OpenShift CLI (
oc
). -
You have created the
cluster-monitoring-config
ConfigMap
object. You have optionally created and configured the
user-workload-monitoring-config
ConfigMap
object in theopenshift-user-workload-monitoring
project. You can add configuration options to thisConfigMap
object for the components that monitor user-defined projects.NoteEvery time you save configuration changes to the
user-workload-monitoring-config
ConfigMap
object, the pods in theopenshift-user-workload-monitoring
project are redeployed. It can sometimes take a while for these components to redeploy. You can create and configure theConfigMap
object before you first enable monitoring for user-defined projects, to prevent having to redeploy the pods often.
Procedure
Edit the
cluster-monitoring-config
ConfigMap
object:$ oc -n openshift-monitoring edit configmap cluster-monitoring-config
Add
enableUserWorkload: true
underdata/config.yaml
:apiVersion: v1 kind: ConfigMap metadata: name: cluster-monitoring-config namespace: openshift-monitoring data: config.yaml: | enableUserWorkload: true 1
- 1
- When set to
true
, theenableUserWorkload
parameter enables monitoring for user-defined projects in a cluster.
Save the file to apply the changes. Monitoring for user-defined projects is then enabled automatically.
WarningWhen changes are saved to the
cluster-monitoring-config
ConfigMap
object, the pods and other resources in theopenshift-monitoring
project might be redeployed. The running monitoring processes in that project might also be restarted.Check that the
prometheus-operator
,prometheus-user-workload
andthanos-ruler-user-workload
pods are running in theopenshift-user-workload-monitoring
project. It might take a short while for the pods to start:$ oc -n openshift-user-workload-monitoring get pod
Example output
NAME READY STATUS RESTARTS AGE prometheus-operator-6f7b748d5b-t7nbg 2/2 Running 0 3h prometheus-user-workload-0 4/4 Running 1 3h prometheus-user-workload-1 4/4 Running 1 3h thanos-ruler-user-workload-0 3/3 Running 0 3h thanos-ruler-user-workload-1 3/3 Running 0 3h
6.2. Granting users permission to monitor user-defined projects
Cluster administrators can monitor all core OpenShift Container Platform and user-defined projects.
Cluster administrators can grant developers and other users permission to monitor their own projects. Privileges are granted by assigning one of the following monitoring roles:
-
The monitoring-rules-view cluster role provides read access to
PrometheusRule
custom resources for a project. -
The monitoring-rules-edit cluster role grants a user permission to create, modify, and delete
PrometheusRule
custom resources for a project. It also grants a user the ability to silence alerts. -
The monitoring-edit cluster role grants the same privileges as the
monitoring-rules-edit
cluster role. Additionally, it enables a user to create new scrape targets for services or pods. With this role, you can also create, modify, and deleteServiceMonitor
andPodMonitor
resources.
You can also grant users permission to configure the components that are responsible for monitoring user-defined projects:
-
The user-workload-monitoring-config-edit role in the
openshift-user-workload-monitoring
project enables you to edit theuser-workload-monitoring-config
ConfigMap
object. With this role, you can edit theConfigMap
object to configure Prometheus, Prometheus Operator, and Thanos Ruler for user-defined workload monitoring.
You can also grant users permission to configure alert routing for user-defined projects:
-
The alert-routing-edit cluster role grants a user permission to create, update, and delete
AlertmanagerConfig
custom resources for a project.
This section provides details on how to assign these roles by using the OpenShift Container Platform web console or the CLI.
6.2.1. Granting user permissions by using the web console
You can grant users permissions to monitor their own projects, by using the OpenShift Container Platform web console.
Prerequisites
-
You have access to the cluster as a user with the
cluster-admin
cluster role. - The user account that you are assigning the role to already exists.
Procedure
- In the Administrator perspective within the OpenShift Container Platform web console, navigate to User Management → Role Bindings → Create Binding.
- In the Binding Type section, select the "Namespace Role Binding" type.
- In the Name field, enter a name for the role binding.
In the Namespace field, select the user-defined project where you want to grant the access.
ImportantThe monitoring role will be bound to the project that you apply in the Namespace field. The permissions that you grant to a user by using this procedure will apply only to the selected project.
-
Select
monitoring-rules-view
,monitoring-rules-edit
, ormonitoring-edit
in the Role Name list. - In the Subject section, select User.
- In the Subject Name field, enter the name of the user.
- Select Create to apply the role binding.
6.2.2. Granting user permissions by using the CLI
You can grant users permissions to monitor their own projects, by using the OpenShift CLI (oc
).
Prerequisites
-
You have access to the cluster as a user with the
cluster-admin
cluster role. - The user account that you are assigning the role to already exists.
-
You have installed the OpenShift CLI (
oc
).
Procedure
Assign a monitoring role to a user for a project:
$ oc policy add-role-to-user <role> <user> -n <namespace> 1
- 1
- Substitute
<role>
withmonitoring-rules-view
,monitoring-rules-edit
, ormonitoring-edit
.
ImportantWhichever role you choose, you must bind it against a specific project as a cluster administrator.
As an example, substitute
<role>
withmonitoring-edit
,<user>
withjohnsmith
, and<namespace>
withns1
. This assigns the userjohnsmith
permission to set up metrics collection and to create alerting rules in thens1
namespace.
6.3. Granting users permission to configure monitoring for user-defined projects
As a cluster administrator, you can assign the user-workload-monitoring-config-edit
role to a user. This grants permission to configure and manage monitoring for user-defined projects without giving them permission to configure and manage core OpenShift Container Platform monitoring components.
Prerequisites
-
You have access to the cluster as a user with the
cluster-admin
cluster role. - The user account that you are assigning the role to already exists.
-
You have installed the OpenShift CLI (
oc
).
Procedure
Assign the
user-workload-monitoring-config-edit
role to a user in theopenshift-user-workload-monitoring
project:$ oc -n openshift-user-workload-monitoring adm policy add-role-to-user \ user-workload-monitoring-config-edit <user> \ --role-namespace openshift-user-workload-monitoring
Verify that the user is correctly assigned to the
user-workload-monitoring-config-edit
role by displaying the related role binding:$ oc describe rolebinding <role_binding_name> -n openshift-user-workload-monitoring
Example command
$ oc describe rolebinding user-workload-monitoring-config-edit -n openshift-user-workload-monitoring
Example output
Name: user-workload-monitoring-config-edit Labels: <none> Annotations: <none> Role: Kind: Role Name: user-workload-monitoring-config-edit Subjects: Kind Name Namespace ---- ---- --------- User user1 1
- 1
- In this example,
user1
is assigned to theuser-workload-monitoring-config-edit
role.
6.4. Accessing metrics from outside the cluster for custom applications
You can query Prometheus metrics from outside the cluster when monitoring your own services with user-defined projects. Access this data from outside the cluster by using the thanos-querier
route.
This access only supports using a Bearer Token for authentication.
Prerequisites
- You have deployed your own service, following the "Enabling monitoring for user-defined projects" procedure.
-
You are logged in to an account with the
cluster-monitoring-view
cluster role, which provides permission to access the Thanos Querier API. You are logged in to an account that has permission to get the Thanos Querier API route.
NoteIf your account does not have permission to get the Thanos Querier API route, a cluster administrator can provide the URL for the route.
Procedure
Extract an authentication token to connect to Prometheus by running the following command:
$ TOKEN=$(oc whoami -t)
Extract the
thanos-querier
API route URL by running the following command:$ HOST=$(oc -n openshift-monitoring get route thanos-querier -ojsonpath={.spec.host})
Set the namespace to the namespace in which your service is running by using the following command:
$ NAMESPACE=ns1
Query the metrics of your own services in the command line by running the following command:
$ curl -H "Authorization: Bearer $TOKEN" -k "https://$HOST/api/v1/query?" --data-urlencode "query=up{namespace='$NAMESPACE'}"
The output shows the status for each application pod that Prometheus is scraping:
Example output
{"status":"success","data":{"resultType":"vector","result":[{"metric":{"__name__":"up","endpoint":"web","instance":"10.129.0.46:8080","job":"prometheus-example-app","namespace":"ns1","pod":"prometheus-example-app-68d47c4fb6-jztp2","service":"prometheus-example-app"},"value":[1591881154.748,"1"]}]}}
Additional resources
6.5. Excluding a user-defined project from monitoring
Individual user-defined projects can be excluded from user workload monitoring. To do so, simply add the openshift.io/user-monitoring
label to the project’s namespace with a value of false
.
Procedure
Add the label to the project namespace:
$ oc label namespace my-project 'openshift.io/user-monitoring=false'
To re-enable monitoring, remove the label from the namespace:
$ oc label namespace my-project 'openshift.io/user-monitoring-'
NoteIf there were any active monitoring targets for the project, it may take a few minutes for Prometheus to stop scraping them after adding the label.
6.6. Disabling monitoring for user-defined projects
After enabling monitoring for user-defined projects, you can disable it again by setting enableUserWorkload: false
in the cluster monitoring ConfigMap
object.
Alternatively, you can remove enableUserWorkload: true
to disable monitoring for user-defined projects.
Procedure
Edit the
cluster-monitoring-config
ConfigMap
object:$ oc -n openshift-monitoring edit configmap cluster-monitoring-config
Set
enableUserWorkload:
tofalse
underdata/config.yaml
:apiVersion: v1 kind: ConfigMap metadata: name: cluster-monitoring-config namespace: openshift-monitoring data: config.yaml: | enableUserWorkload: false
- Save the file to apply the changes. Monitoring for user-defined projects is then disabled automatically.
Check that the
prometheus-operator
,prometheus-user-workload
andthanos-ruler-user-workload
pods are terminated in theopenshift-user-workload-monitoring
project. This might take a short while:$ oc -n openshift-user-workload-monitoring get pod
Example output
No resources found in openshift-user-workload-monitoring project.
The user-workload-monitoring-config
ConfigMap
object in the openshift-user-workload-monitoring
project is not automatically deleted when monitoring for user-defined projects is disabled. This is to preserve any custom configurations that you may have created in the ConfigMap
object.