Tanzu Observability Brings Full-Stack Monitoring of Kubernetes Clusters for OpenShift

January 20, 2022 Juhi Shah

Red Hat OpenShift is an enterprise Kubernetes platform that provides users with a unified cloud experience wherever it’s deployed. VMware Tanzu Observability by Wavefront offers observability and analytics for multi-cloud Kubernetes environments. Now these two products work even better together. 

With VMware’s latest certified version of OpenShift, you can now install and configure the Wavefront Helm Chart on OpenShift Enterprise 4, enabling full-stack monitoring of your OpenShift clusters with just the click of a button. As a result of VMware’s partnership with Red Hat, platform operators and developers can now get observability of their applications, conduct Day 2 operations more easily, and gain access to various analytics across their OpenShift environments.

What does the Helm chart do?

Helm is commonly known as the de facto package manager for Kubernetes, and a Helm chart is essentially a packaged version of an application. By unifying all of an application’s resources into one file, you can easily deploy that application as one unit without having to manage multiple YAML files to do so. Another benefit of using a Helm chart is that you can deploy different versions by editing the template, enabling you to deploy applications at a faster rate. With VMware’s Wavefront Helm chart, you’ll be able to visualize and manage observability of your OpenShift clusters through tailored dashboards. The Wavefront Helm chart allows for a simple installation experience of the Wavefront collector and proxy, and it will upgrade and continuously monitor their health as well. As you scale your organization’s applications, this will help minimize the cost and risk associated with managing observability for OpenShift environments. 

How to install the Helm chart

Review the documentation, or follow along below for a step-by-step guide on installing the Helm chart. In just six steps, you’ll be able to observe and monitor your OpenShift clusters!

1. Log in to the OpenShift Web UI as an administrator and create a project titled “wavefront”.

2. In the left pane, navigate to Helm and select Install a Helm Chart from the developer catalog.

3. Search for Wavefront and click Install Helm Chart.

Screenshot showing how to search for Wavefront Helm Chart

4. You can configure via form or YAML view. Replace the following with your values:

  • clusterName → <KUBERNETES_CLUSTER_NAME>
  • token → <YOUR_WF_API_TOKEN>
  • URL → https://<YOUR_WF_INSTANCE>.wavefront.com

Screenshot showing how to install Wavefront Helm Chart

5. Click Install.

6. To access curated dashboards, navigate back to https://<YOUR_WF_INSTANCE>.wavefront.com, click the Integrations tab, click the Kubernetes icon, then select the Dashboards section.

Below is an example of a summarized dashboard showcasing all your cluster-level, node-level, pod-level, and container-level metrics.

Dashboard showing cluster-level, node-level, pod-level, and container-level metrics using Tanzu Observability for OpenShift clusters

Here is an example of dashboards that show node-level metrics. 

Node-level metrics using Tanzu Observability for OpenShift clusters

VMware product listings are available through the Red Hat catalog. Learn more about how Tanzu Observability by Wavefront has partnered with OpenShift to deliver exceptional monitoring and observability capabilities.

Get started

With VMware’s latest certified version of OpenShift, customers can install the Wavefront Helm chart and gain immediate full-stack and automated observability for OpenShift clusters. Sign up for a Tanzu Observability free trial today to use with VMware’s OpenShift integration to manage your Kubernetes clusters. 

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