Netdata Cloud On-Prem Installation

This installation guide assumes the prerequisites for installing Netdata Cloud On-Prem as satisfied. For more information please refer to the requirements documentation.

Installation Requirements

The following components are required to install Netdata Cloud On-Prem:

AWS CLI
Helm version 3.12+ with OCI Configuration (explained in the installation section)
Kubectl

The minimum requirements for Netdata-Cloud are:

4 CPU cores
15GiB of memory
Cloud services are ephemeral

The requirements for the non-production Dependencies helm chart:

8 CPU cores
14GiB of memory
160GiB for PVCs (SSD)

NOTE: Values for each component may vary depending on the type of load. The most compute-intensive task that the On-Prem needs to perform is the initial sync of directly connected Agents. The testing for these requirements was conducted with 1,000 nodes directly connected to the On-Prem. If you plan on spawning hundreds of new nodes within a few minutes, Postgres will be the first bottleneck. For example, a 2 vCPU / 8 GiB memory / 1k IOPS database can handle 1,000 nodes without any problems if your environment is fairly steady, adding nodes in batches of 10-30 (directly connected).

Preparations for Installation

Configure AWS CLI

Install AWS CLI.

There are 2 options for configuring aws cli to work with the provided credentials. The first one is to set the environment variables:

export AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID=<your_secret_id>
export AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY=<your_secret_key>

The second one is to use an interactive shell:

aws configure

Configure helm to use secured ECR repository

Using aws command we will generate a token for helm to access the secured ECR repository:

aws ecr get-login-password --region us-east-1 | helm registry login --username AWS --password-stdin 362923047827.dkr.ecr.us-east-1.amazonaws.com

After this step you should be able to add the repository to your helm or just pull the helm chart:

helm pull oci://362923047827.dkr.ecr.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/netdata-cloud-dependency --untar #optional
helm pull oci://362923047827.dkr.ecr.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/netdata-cloud-onprem --untar

Local folders with the newest versions of helm charts should appear on your working dir.

Installation

Netdata provides access to two helm charts:

netdata-cloud-dependency - required applications for netdata-cloud-onprem.
netdata-cloud-onprem - the application itself + provisioning

netdata-cloud-dependency

This helm chart is designed to install the necessary applications:

Redis
Elasticsearch
EMQX
Apache Pulsar
PostgreSQL
Traefik
Mailcatcher
k8s-ecr-login-renew
kubernetes-ingress

Although we provide an easy way to install all these applications, we expect users of Netdata Cloud On-Prem to provide production quality versions for them. Therefore, every configuration option is available through values.yaml in the folder that contains your netdata-cloud-dependency helm chart. All configuration options are described in README.md which is a part of the helm chart.

Each component can be enabled/disabled individually. It is done by true/false switches in values.yaml. This way, it is easier to migrate to production-grade components gradually.

Unless you prefer otherwise, k8s-ecr-login-renew is responsible for calling out the AWS API for token regeneration. This token is then injected into the secret that every node is using for authentication with secured ECR when pulling the images.

The default setting in values.yaml of netdata-cloud-onprem - .global.imagePullSecrets is configured to work out of the box with the dependency helm chart.

For helm chart installation - save your changes in values.yaml and execute:

cd [your helm chart location]
helm upgrade --wait --install netdata-cloud-dependency -n netdata-cloud --create-namespace -f values.yaml .

Keep in mind that netdata-cloud-dependency is provided only as a proof of concept. Users installing Netdata Cloud On-Prem should properly configure these components.

netdata-cloud-onprem

Every configuration option is available in values.yaml in the folder that contains your netdata-cloud-onprem helm chart. All configuration options are described in the README.md which is a part of the helm chart.

Installing Netdata Cloud On-Prem

cd [your helm chart location]
helm upgrade --wait --install netdata-cloud-onprem -n netdata-cloud --create-namespace -f values.yaml .

Important notes

Installation takes care of provisioning the resources with migration services.
During the first installation, a secret called the netdata-cloud-common is created. It contains several randomly generated entries. Deleting helm chart is not going to delete this secret, nor reinstalling the whole On-Prem, unless manually deleted by kubernetes administrator. The content of this secret is extremely relevant - strings that are contained there are essential parts of encryption. Losing or changing the data that it contains will result in data loss.

Short description of Netdata Cloud microservices

cloud-accounts-service

Responsible for user registration & authentication. Manages user account information.

cloud-agent-data-ctrl-service

Forwards request from the Cloud to the relevant Agents. The requests include:

Fetching chart metadata from the Agent
Fetching chart data from the Agent
Fetching function data from the Agent

cloud-agent-mqtt-input-service

Forwards MQTT messages emitted by the Agent related to the Agent entities to the internal Pulsar broker. These include Agent connection state updates.

cloud-agent-mqtt-output-service

Forwards Pulsar messages emitted in the Cloud related to the Agent entities to the MQTT broker. From there, the messages reach the relevant Agent.

cloud-alarm-config-mqtt-input-service

Forwards MQTT messages emitted by the Agent related to the alarm-config entities to the internal Pulsar broker. These include the data for the alarm configuration as seen by the Agent.

cloud-alarm-log-mqtt-input-service

Forwards MQTT messages emitted by the Agent related to the alarm-log entities to the internal Pulsar broker. These contain data about the alarm transitions that occurred in an Agent.

cloud-alarm-mqtt-output-service

Forwards Pulsar messages emitted in the Cloud related to the alarm entities to the MQTT broker. From there, the messages reach the relevant Agent.

cloud-alarm-processor-service

Persists latest alert statuses received from the Agent in the Cloud. Aggregates alert statuses from relevant node instances. Exposes API endpoints to fetch alert data for visualization on the Cloud. Determines if notifications need to be sent when alert statuses change and emits relevant messages to Pulsar. Exposes API endpoints to store and return notification-silencing data.

cloud-alarm-streaming-service

Responsible for starting the alert stream between the Agent and the Cloud. Ensures that messages are processed in the correct order, and starts a reconciliation process between the Cloud and the Agent if out-of-order processing occurs.

cloud-charts-mqtt-input-service

Forwards MQTT messages emitted by the Agent related to the chart entities to the internal Pulsar broker. These include the chart metadata that is used to display relevant charts on the Cloud.

cloud-charts-mqtt-output-service

Forwards Pulsar messages emitted in the Cloud related to the charts entities to the MQTT broker. From there, the messages reach the relevant Agent.

cloud-charts-service

Exposes API endpoints to fetch the chart metadata. Forwards data requests via the cloud-agent-data-ctrl-service to the relevant Agents to fetch chart data points. Exposes API endpoints to call various other endpoints on the Agent, for instance, functions.

cloud-custom-dashboard-service

Exposes API endpoints to fetch and store custom dashboard data.

cloud-environment-service

Serves as the first contact point between the Agent and the Cloud. Returns authentication and MQTT endpoints to connecting Agents.

cloud-feed-service

Processes incoming feed events and stores them in Elasticsearch. Exposes API endpoints to fetch feed events from Elasticsearch.

cloud-frontend

Contains the on-prem Cloud website. Serves static content.

cloud-iam-user-service

Acts as a middleware for authentication on most of the API endpoints. Validates incoming token headers, injects the relevant ones, and forwards the requests.

cloud-metrics-exporter

Exports various metrics from an On-Prem Cloud installation. Uses the Prometheus metric exposition format.

cloud-netdata-assistant

Exposes API endpoints to fetch a human-friendly explanation of various netdata configuration options, namely the alerts.

cloud-node-mqtt-input-service

Forwards MQTT messages emitted by the Agent related to the node entities to the internal Pulsar broker. These include the node metadata as well as their connectivity state, either direct or via parents.

cloud-node-mqtt-output-service