tillerless-helm-release-exporter

⚠ Warning: This project is under development and not yet stable.

tillerless-helm-release-exporter

Helm (both v2 and v3) exporter which collects information directly from Release's ConfigMap or Secret storage backend without the need for a running Tiller component.

Collects metrics for Releases which are:

• deployed with Helm v2 with Tiller,
• in any Namespaces in the Kubernetes cluster indepdendently from where the Tiller is running,
• deployed with Helm v2 without in-cluster Tiller (e.g. Tillerless Helm),
• deployed with Helm v3

Doesn't collect metrics for Releases which are:

• deployed with helm template ... | kubectl apply -f - (e.g. Istio Install with Helm, Option 1). Since these are not really Helm Releases, they are not stored in either ConfigMap or a Secret backend.

Installing the Chart

The charts are generated by Travis CI, and stored and served by Github Pages from gh-pages branch.

Install using helm 2:

helm repo add bergerx-helm-exporter https://bergerx.github.io/tillerless-helm-release-exporter
helm install bergerx-helm-exporter/tillerless-helm-release-exporter

Install using helm 3:

helm repo add bergerx-helm-exporter https://bergerx.github.io/tillerless-helm-release-exporter
helm install helm-exporter bergerx-helm-exporter/tillerless-helm-release-exporter

Check values.yaml for all helm parameters.

For deploying into a cluster with prometheus operator:

helm install bergerx-helm-exporter/tillerless-helm-release-exporter --set serviceMonitor.enabled=true

Collected metrics

Labels:

• chart_name
• chart_version
• release_name
• release_namespace
• helm_version Either "v2" or "v3"
• release_status: Uses Helm 3 status names as default. Helm 2 status names are mapped to Helm 3 statuses (e.g. "uninstalled" instead of "DELETED")
• storage_driver: Either ConfigMap or Secret, only these two storage drivers are collected.
• chart ("<chart_name>-<chart_version>") This is actually a redundant field but kept for convenience to write easier join queries since the chart/helm.sh/chart field has the value in this format.

Example metrics

helm_release_info{chart="cert-manager-v0.9.1",chart_name="cert-manager",chart_version="v0.9.1",helm_version="v2",release_name="cert-manager",release_namespace="cert-manager",release_status="deployed",storage_driver="ConfigMap"} 16
helm_release_info{chart="grafana-3.8.15",chart_name="grafana",chart_version="3.8.15",helm_version="v2",release_name="grafana",release_namespace="prom",release_status="deployed",storage_driver="ConfigMap"} 3
helm_release_info{chart="heapster-1.0.1",chart_name="heapster",chart_version="1.0.1",helm_version="v2",release_name="heapster",release_namespace="kube-system",release_status="deployed",storage_driver="ConfigMap"} 30
helm_release_info{chart="helm-exporter-0.3.1",chart_name="helm-exporter",chart_version="0.3.1",helm_version="v2",release_name="helm-exporter",release_namespace="default",release_status="uninstalled",storage_driver="ConfigMap"} 15
helm_release_info{chart="home-assistant-0.9.7",chart_name="home-assistant",chart_version="0.9.7",helm_version="v2",release_name="home-assistant",release_namespace="home-assistant",release_status="deployed",storage_driver="ConfigMap"} 4
helm_release_info{chart="kubernetes-dashboard-1.9.0",chart_name="kubernetes-dashboard",chart_version="1.9.0",helm_version="v2",release_name="ui",release_namespace="kube-system",release_status="deployed",storage_driver="ConfigMap"} 29
helm_release_info{chart="memcached-3.0.0",chart_name="memcached",chart_version="3.0.0",helm_version="v3",release_name="memc",release_namespace="test",release_status="deployed",storage_driver="Secret"} 1
helm_release_info{chart="nginx-ingress-1.22.0",chart_name="nginx-ingress",chart_version="1.22.0",helm_version="v2",release_name="ingress",release_namespace="kube-system",release_status="failed",storage_driver="ConfigMap"} 50
helm_release_info{chart="prometheus-9.1.1",chart_name="prometheus",chart_version="9.1.1",helm_version="v2",release_name="prometheus",release_namespace="prom",release_status="deployed",storage_driver="ConfigMap"} 4

Why a new exporter

• Supports both Helm 2 and Helm 3 releases,
• Works without a Tiller (e.g. works even when you used helm tiller plugin, aka tillerless-helm),
• No need to deal with Tiller tls certs,
• Exports both chart and release name and versions in resulting metrics, chart version is significant to see the effective version, release version is actually a signal to annotate when the last Helm deployment is done,
• Release versions as the metric's value, so you can annotate release dates in grafana.

Alternatives

• https://github.com/sstarcher/helm-exporter
• https://github.com/Kubedex/exporter

License