Presenting vRealize LogInsight Cloud Fluentbit Helm Chart For TKG/Kubernetes Logs

Previously I had published Helm Chart for vRealize Log Insight Cloud using fluentd, In this blog, I will present Helm Chart using the fluent bit.

It deploys fluent bit (version 1.7 which has Multithread Support) as deamon set with 4 workers 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/AWS.
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?

Helm is 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 fluent bit as daemon set which fetches the logs and forwards it to vRealize LogInsight Cloud.

Pre-requisites

You need to have the following pre-requisites

  1. vRealize LogInsight Cloud API Token
  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 loginsightcloud https://munishpalmakhija.github.io/loginsight-cloud-helm-fluentbit/

Step 2 – Get Values file in your working directory

helm show values loginsightcloud/loginsight-cloud-helm-fluentbit  > values.yaml

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

cat values.yaml

Step 4 – Install Chart.

helm install vrlic-fluentbit-helm-test loginsightcloud/loginsight-cloud-helm-fluentbit -f values.yaml

Step 5 – Verify Kubernetes Pods

kubectl get pods -A | grep vrlic-fluentbit-helm-test

Step 6 – Verify Helm Release

helm list

Installing the Chart – Procedure 2

Step 1 – Add Chart Repo

helm repo add loginsightcloud https://munishpalmakhija.github.io/loginsight-cloud-helm-fluentbit/

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

helm install vrlic-fluentbit-helm-test loginsightcloud/loginsight-cloud-helm-fluentbit/ --set  vrlic.apiKey=SETME --set tag.environment=tanzu_k8s_grid

Step 3 – Verify Kubernetes Pods

kubectl get pods -A | grep vrlic-fluentbit-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” and create a dashboard to view your logs in vRealize LogInsight Cloud.

 

 

 

 

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