Presenting vRealize LogInsight Fluentd Helm Chart for Kubernetes/TKG Logs

With Realize LogInsight 8.4 came with official support for Kubernetes logs. For more details on What’s New in vRealize Log Insight 8.4 you can refer to the announcement here 

If you have been following the blog I had published my own fluentd container image on dockerhub for Log Insight which was then leveraged to create the official image. 

In this blog, I would like to present the Helm Chart which I built for vRealize LogInsight using the official image. 

It deploys fluentd as deamon set to collect logs from Kubernetes Cluster. I have verified with the following flavors 

  • Tanzu Kubernetes Grid (TKG) K8 Cluster.
  • Vanilla K8 Clusters deployed on vSphere. 
Once you have logs flowing you can create your own dashboard to visualize the environment. I have created the following dashboard for my TKG environment

 

What is Helm? 

Helmis a package manager for Kubernetes. Helm is the best way to find, share, and use software built for Kubernetes.

What are Helm charts?

Helm Charts are Kubernetes YAML manifests combined into a single package that can be deployed to K8 environments. Once packaged, installing a Helm Chart into your cluster is as easy as running a single helm command, which simplifies the deployment & upgrade process

What does it do?  

It downloads the chart from Chart Repository (Github Pages in my case) and installs the chart. Chart performs the following tasks
  • Creates Namespace
  • Creates required Clusterole/bindings, service accounts.
  • Deploys fluentd as daemon set which fetches the logs and forwards it to vRLI. 

 

 

Pre-requisites 

You need to have the following pre-requisites 

  1. vRealize LogInsight FQDN/IP 
  2. Helm Version = \’3.x\’
  3. Admin access to the Kubernetes Cluster

Installing the Chart – Procedure 1 

 

Step 1 – Add Chart Repo 

helm repo add loginsight https://munishpalmakhija.github.io/loginsight-helm-fluentd/

Step 2 – Get Values file in your working directory 

helm show values loginsight/loginsight-helm-fluentd  > values.yaml

Step 3 – Update Values file with API Token and other relevant details.  

cat values.yaml

Step 4 – Install Chart.  

helm install vrli-fluentd-helm-test loginsight/loginsight-helm-fluentd -f values.yaml

Step 5 – Verify Kubernetes Pods  

kubectl get pods -A | grep vrli-fluentd-helm-test

 

Step 6 – Verify Helm Release 

helm list

 

Installing the Chart – Procedure 2

Step 1 – Add Chart Repo 

helm repo add loginsight https://munishpalmakhija.github.io/loginsight-helm-fluentd/

Step 2 – Install Chart by setting values during run time.  

helm install vrli-fluentd-helm-test loginsight/loginsight-helm-fluentd/ --set vrli.host=SETME --set tag.environment=tanzu_k8s_grid

Step 3 – Verify Kubernetes Pods  

kubectl get pods -A | grep vrli-fluentd-helm-test

 

 

Step 4 – Verify Helm Release 

helm list

 

 

 

 

Verify Logs

If everything is successful you can search for logs using “environment contains tanzu_k8s_grid”

 

 

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