This guide assumes you have a basic understanding of the Prometheus resource and have read the getting started guide.
The Prometheus Operator introduces an Alertmanager resource, which allows users to declaratively describe an Alertmanager cluster. To successfully deploy an Alertmanager cluster, it is important to understand the contract between Prometheus and Alertmanager.
The Alertmanager may be used to:
- Deduplicate alerts fired by Prometheus
- Silence alerts
- Route and send grouped notifications via providers (PagerDuty, OpsGenie, ...)
Prometheus' configuration also includes "rule files", which contain the alerting rules. When an alerting rule triggers it fires that alert against all Alertmanager instances, on every rule evaluation interval. The Alertmanager instances communicate to each other which notifications have already been sent out. For more information on this system design, see the High Availability scheme description.
The Prometheus Operator also introduces an AlertmanagerConfig resource, which allows users to declaratively describe Alertmanager configurations. The AlertmanagerConfig resource is currently v1alpha1, testing and feedback are welcome.
First, create an example Alertmanager cluster, with three instances.
apiVersion: monitoring.coreos.com/v1
kind: Alertmanager
metadata:
name: example
spec:
replicas: 3The Alertmanager instances will not be able to start up, unless a valid configuration is given. An config file Secret will be composed by taking an optional base config file Secret specified through the configSecret field in the Alertmanager resource Spec, and merging that with any AlertmanagerConfig resources that get matched by using the alertmanagerConfigSelector and alertmanagerConfigNamespaceSelector selectors from the Alertmanager resource.
For more information on configuring Alertmanager, see the Prometheus Alerting Configuration document.
The following example configuration creates an AlertmanagerConfig resource that sends notifications to a non-existent wechat receiver:
apiVersion: monitoring.coreos.com/v1alpha1
kind: AlertmanagerConfig
metadata:
name: config-example
labels:
alertmanagerConfig: example
spec:
route:
groupBy: ['job']
groupWait: 30s
groupInterval: 5m
repeatInterval: 12h
receiver: 'wechat-example'
receivers:
- name: 'wechat-example'
wechatConfigs:
- apiURL: 'http://wechatserver:8080/'
corpID: 'wechat-corpid'
apiSecret:
name: 'wechat-config'
key: 'apiSecret'
---
apiVersion: v1
kind: Secret
type: Opaque
metadata:
name: wechat-config
data:
apiSecret: d2VjaGF0LXNlY3JldAo=Save the above AlertmanagerConfig in a file called alertmanager-config.yaml and create a resource from it using kubectl.
$ kubectl create -f alertmanager-config.yamlThe alertmanagerConfigSelector field in the Alertmanager resource Spec needs to be specified so that the operator can select such AlertmanagerConfig resources. In the previous example, the label alertmanagerConfig: example is added, so the Alertmanager instance should be updated, adding the alertmanagerConfigSelector:
apiVersion: monitoring.coreos.com/v1
kind: Alertmanager
metadata:
name: example
spec:
replicas: 3
alertmanagerConfigSelector:
matchLabels:
alertmanagerConfig: exampleThe following example configuration sends notifications against to a webhook:
global:
resolve_timeout: 5m
route:
group_by: ['job']
group_wait: 30s
group_interval: 5m
repeat_interval: 12h
receiver: 'webhook'
receivers:
- name: 'webhook'
webhook_configs:
- url: 'http://alertmanagerwh:30500/'Save the above Alertmanager config in a file called alertmanager.yaml and create a secret from it using kubectl
Alertmanager instances require the secret resource naming to follow the format
alertmanager-{ALERTMANAGER_NAME}. In the previous example, the name of the Alertmanager is example, so the secret name must be alertmanager-example, and the name of the config file alertmanager.yaml. Also, the name of the secret can be set through the field configSecret in Alertmanager configuration, if you desire to use a different one.
$ kubectl create secret generic alertmanager-example --from-file=alertmanager.yamlNote that Alertmanager configurations can use templates (.tmpl files), which can be added on the secret along with the alertmanager.yaml config file. For example:
apiVersion: v1
kind: Secret
metadata:
name: alertmanager-example
data:
alertmanager.yaml: {BASE64_CONFIG}
template_1.tmpl: {BASE64_TEMPLATE_1}
template_2.tmpl: {BASE64_TEMPLATE_2}
...Templates will be placed on the same path as the configuration. To load the templates, the configuration (alertmanager.yaml) should point to them:
templates:
- '*.tmpl'Once the operator merges the optional manually specified Secret with any selected AlertmanagerConfig resources, a new configuration Secret is created with the name alertmanager-<Alertmanager name>-generated, and is mounted into Alertmanager Pods created through the Alertmanager object.
To be able to view the web UI, expose it through a Service. A simple way to do this is to use a Service of type NodePort.
apiVersion: v1
kind: Service
metadata:
name: alertmanager-example
spec:
type: NodePort
ports:
- name: web
nodePort: 30903
port: 9093
protocol: TCP
targetPort: web
selector:
alertmanager: exampleOnce created it allows the web UI to be accessible via a Node's IP and the port 30903.
This Alertmanager cluster is now fully functional and highly available, but no alerts are fired against it. Create Prometheus instances to fire alerts to the Alertmanagers.
apiVersion: monitoring.coreos.com/v1
kind: Prometheus
metadata:
name: example
spec:
replicas: 2
alerting:
alertmanagers:
- namespace: default
name: alertmanager-example
port: web
serviceMonitorSelector:
matchLabels:
team: frontend
ruleSelector:
matchLabels:
role: alert-rules
prometheus: exampleThe above configuration specifies a Prometheus that finds all of the Alertmanagers behind the Service created with alertmanager-example-service.yaml. The alertmanagers name and port fields should match those of the Service to allow this to occur.
Prometheus rule files are held in PrometheusRule custom resources. Use the label selector field ruleSelector in the Prometheus object to define the rule files that you want to be mounted into Prometheus.
The best practice is to label the PrometheusRules containing rule files with role: alert-rules as well as the name of the Prometheus object, prometheus: example in this case.
apiVersion: monitoring.coreos.com/v1
kind: PrometheusRule
metadata:
creationTimestamp: null
labels:
prometheus: example
role: alert-rules
name: prometheus-example-rules
spec:
groups:
- name: ./example.rules
rules:
- alert: ExampleAlert
expr: vector(1)The example PrometheusRule always immediately triggers an alert, which is only for demonstration purposes. To validate that everything is working properly have a look at each of the Prometheus web UIs.
Use kubectl's proxy functionality to view the web UI without a Service.
Run:
kubectl proxy --port=8001Then the web UI of each Prometheus instance can be viewed, they both have a firing alert called ExampleAlert, as defined in the loaded alerting rules.
- http://localhost:8001/api/v1/proxy/namespaces/default/pods/prometheus-example-0:9090/alerts
- http://localhost:8001/api/v1/proxy/namespaces/default/pods/prometheus-example-1:9090/alerts
Looking at the status page for "Runtime & Build Information" on the Prometheus web UI shows the discovered and active Alertmanagers that the Prometheus instance will fire alerts against.
- http://localhost:8001/api/v1/proxy/namespaces/default/pods/prometheus-example-0:9090/status
- http://localhost:8001/api/v1/proxy/namespaces/default/pods/prometheus-example-1:9090/status
These show three discovered Alertmanagers.
Heading to the Alertmanager web UI now shows one active alert, although all Prometheus instances are firing it. Configuring the Alertmanager further allows custom alert routing, grouping and notification mechanisms.