kube-metrics-adapter

Kube Metrics Adapter is a general purpose metrics adapter for Kubernetes that can collect and serve custom and external metrics for Horizontal Pod Autoscaling.

It supports scaling based on Prometheus metrics, SQS queues and others out of the box.

It discovers Horizontal Pod Autoscaling resources and starts to collect the requested metrics and stores them in memory. It's implemented using the custom-metrics-apiserver library.

Here's an example of a HorizontalPodAutoscaler resource configured to get requests-per-second metrics from each pod of the deployment myapp.

apiVersion: autoscaling/v2beta1
kind: HorizontalPodAutoscaler
metadata:
  name: myapp-hpa
  annotations:
    # metric-config.<metricType>.<metricName>.<collectorName>/<configKey>
    metric-config.pods.requests-per-second.json-path/json-key: "$.http_server.rps"
    metric-config.pods.requests-per-second.json-path/path: /metrics
    metric-config.pods.requests-per-second.json-path/port: "9090"
spec:
  scaleTargetRef:
    apiVersion: apps/v1
    kind: Deployment
    name: myapp
  minReplicas: 1
  maxReplicas: 10
  metrics:
  - type: Pods
    pods:
      metricName: requests-per-second
      targetAverageValue: 1k

The metric-config.* annotations are used by the kube-metrics-adapter to configure a collector for getting the metrics. In the above example it configures a json-path pod collector.

Kubernetes compatibility

Like the support policy offered for Kubernetes, this project aims to support the latest three minor releases of Kubernetes.

Currently the default supported API is autoscaling/v2beta1. However we aim to move to autoscaling/v2beta2 (available since v1.12) in the near future as this adds a lot of improvements over v2beta1. The move to v2beta2 will most likely happen as soon as GKE adds support for it.

Building

This project uses Go modules as introduced in Go 1.11 therefore you need Go >=1.11 installed in order to build. If using Go 1.11 you also need to activate Module support.

Assuming Go has been setup with module support it can be built simply by running:

export GO111MODULE=on # needed if the project is checked out in your $GOPATH.
$ make

Collectors

Collectors are different implementations for getting metrics requested by an HPA resource. They are configured based on HPA resources and started on-demand by the kube-metrics-adapter to only collect the metrics required for scaling the application.

The collectors are configured either simply based on the metrics defined in an HPA resource, or via additional annotations on the HPA resource.

Pod collector

The pod collector allows collecting metrics from each pod matched by the HPA. Currently only json-path collection is supported.

Supported metrics

Metric	Description	Type	K8s Versions
custom	No predefined metrics. Metrics are generated from user defined queries.	Pods	>=1.10

Example

This is an example of using the pod collector to collect metrics from a json metrics endpoint of each pod matched by the HPA.

apiVersion: autoscaling/v2beta1
kind: HorizontalPodAutoscaler
metadata:
  name: myapp-hpa
  annotations:
    # metric-config.<metricType>.<metricName>.<collectorName>/<configKey>
    metric-config.pods.requests-per-second.json-path/json-key: "$.http_server.rps"
    metric-config.pods.requests-per-second.json-path/path: /metrics
    metric-config.pods.requests-per-second.json-path/port: "9090"
    metric-config.pods.requests-per-second.json-path/scheme: "https"
spec:
  scaleTargetRef:
    apiVersion: apps/v1
    kind: Deployment
    name: myapp
  minReplicas: 1
  maxReplicas: 10
  metrics:
  - type: Pods
    pods:
      metricName: requests-per-second
      targetAverageValue: 1k

The pod collector is configured through the annotations which specify the collector name json-path and a set of configuration options for the collector. json-key defines the json-path query for extracting the right metric. This assumes the pod is exposing metrics in JSON format. For the above example the following JSON data would be expected:

{
  "http_server": {
    "rps": 0.5
  }
}

The json-path query support depends on the github.com/oliveagle/jsonpath library. See the README for possible queries. It's expected that the metric you query returns something that can be turned into a float64.

The other configuration options path, port and scheme specify where the metrics endpoint is exposed on the pod. The path and port options do not have default values so they must be defined. The scheme is optional and defaults to http.

Prometheus collector

The Prometheus collector is a generic collector which can map Prometheus queries to metrics that can be used for scaling. This approach is different from how it's done in the k8s-prometheus-adapter where all available Prometheus metrics are collected and transformed into metrics which the HPA can scale on, and there is no possibility to do custom queries. With the approach implemented here, users can define custom queries and only metrics returned from those queries will be available, reducing the total number of metrics stored.

One downside of this approach is that bad performing queries can slow down/kill Prometheus, so it can be dangerous to allow in a multi tenant cluster. It's also not possible to restrict the available metrics using something like RBAC since any user would be able to create the metrics based on a custom query.

I still believe custom queries are more useful, but it's good to be aware of the trade-offs between the two approaches.

Supported metrics

Metric	Description	Type	Kind	K8s Versions
prometheus-query	Generic metric which requires a user defined query.	External		>=1.10
custom	No predefined metrics. Metrics are generated from user defined queries.	Object	any	>=1.10

Example: External Metric

This is an example of an HPA configured to get metrics based on a Prometheus query. The query is defined in the annotation metric-config.external.prometheus-query.prometheus/processed-events-per-second where processed-events-per-second is the query name which will be associated with the result of the query. A matching query-name label must be defined in the matchLabels of the metric definition. This allows having multiple prometheus queries associated with a single HPA.

apiVersion: autoscaling/v2beta1
kind: HorizontalPodAutoscaler
metadata:
  name: myapp-hpa
  annotations:
    # This annotation is optional.
    # If specified, then this prometheus server is used,
    # instead of the prometheus server specified as the CLI argument `--prometheus-server`.
    metric-config.external.prometheus-query.prometheus/prometheus-server: http://prometheus.my-namespace.svc
    # metric-config.<metricType>.<metricName>.<collectorName>/<configKey>
    # <configKey> == query-name
    metric-config.external.prometheus-query.prometheus/processed-events-per-second: |
      scalar(sum(rate(event-service_events_count{application="event-service",processed="true"}[1m])))      
spec:
  scaleTargetRef:
    apiVersion: apps/v1
    kind: Deployment
    name: custom-metrics-consumer
  minReplicas: 1
  maxReplicas: 10
  metrics:
  - type: External
    external:
      metricName: prometheus-query
      metricSelector:
        matchLabels:
          query-name: processed-events-per-second
      targetAverageValue: 10

Example: Object Metric [DEPRECATED]

Note: Prometheus Object metrics are deprecated and will most likely be removed in the future. Use the Prometheus External metrics instead as described above.

This is an example of an HPA configured to get metrics based on a Prometheus query. The query is defined in the annotation metric-config.object.processed-events-per-second.prometheus/query where processed-events-per-second is the metric name which will be associated with the result of the query.

It also specifies an annotation metric-config.object.processed-events-per-second.prometheus/per-replica which instructs the collector to treat the results as an average over all pods targeted by the HPA. This makes it possible to mimic the behavior of targetAverageValue which is not implemented for metric type Object as of Kubernetes v1.10. (It will most likely come in v1.12).

apiVersion: autoscaling/v2beta1
kind: HorizontalPodAutoscaler
metadata:
  name: myapp-hpa
  annotations:
    # metric-config.<metricType>.<metricName>.<collectorName>/<configKey>
    metric-config.object.processed-events-per-second.prometheus/query: |
      scalar(sum(rate(event-service_events_count{application="event-service",processed="true"}[1m])))      
    metric-config.object.processed-events-per-second.prometheus/per-replica: "true"
spec:
  scaleTargetRef:
    apiVersion: apps/v1
    kind: Deployment
    name: custom-metrics-consumer
  minReplicas: 1
  maxReplicas: 10
  metrics:
  - type: Object
    object:
      metricName: processed-events-per-second
      target:
        apiVersion: v1
        kind: Pod
        name: dummy-pod
      targetValue: 10 # this will be treated as targetAverageValue

Note: The HPA object requires an Object to be specified. However when a Prometheus metric is used there is no need for this object. But to satisfy the schema we specify a dummy pod called dummy-pod.

Skipper collector

The skipper collector is a simple wrapper around the Prometheus collector to make it easy to define an HPA for scaling based on ingress metrics when skipper is used as the ingress implementation in your cluster. It assumes you are collecting Prometheus metrics from skipper and it provides the correct Prometheus queries out of the box so users don't have to define those manually.

Supported metrics

Metric	Description	Type	Kind	K8s Versions
requests-per-second	Scale based on requests per second for a certain ingress.	Object	Ingress	>=1.14 (can work with >=1.10)

Example

This is an example of an HPA that will scale based on requests-per-second for an ingress called myapp.

apiVersion: autoscaling/v2beta1
kind: HorizontalPodAutoscaler
metadata:
  name: myapp-hpa
spec:
  scaleTargetRef:
    apiVersion: apps/v1
    kind: Deployment
    name: myapp
  minReplicas: 1
  maxReplicas: 10
  metrics:
  - type: Object
    object:
      metricName: requests-per-second
      target:
        apiVersion: extensions/v1beta1
        kind: Ingress
        name: myapp
      averageValue: 10 # Only works with Kubernetes >=1.14
      # for Kubernetes <1.14 you can use `targetValue` instead:
      targetValue: 10 # this must be set, but has no effect if `averageValue` is defined.
                      # Otherwise it will be treated as targetAverageValue

Metric weighting based on backend

Skipper supports sending traffic to different backend based on annotations present on the Ingress object. When the metric name is specified without a backend as requests-per-second then the number of replicas will be calculated based on the full traffic served by that ingress. If however only the traffic being routed to a specific backend should be used then the backend name can be specified as a metric name like requests-per-second,backend1 which would return the requests-per-second being sent to the backend1. The ingress annotation where the backend weights can be obtained can be specified through the flag --skipper-backends-annotation.

Note: For Kubernetes <v1.14 the HPA does not support averageValue for metrics of type Object. In case of requests per second it does not make sense to scale on a summed value because you can not make the total requests per second go down by adding more pods. For this reason the skipper collector will automatically treat the value you define in targetValue as an average per pod instead of a total sum.

ONLY use targetValue if you are on Kubernetes <1.14, it is not as percise as using averageValue and will not be supported after Kubernetes v1.16 is released according to the support policy.

AWS collector

The AWS collector allows scaling based on external metrics exposed by AWS services e.g. SQS queue lengths.

AWS IAM role

To integrate with AWS, the controller needs to run on nodes with access to AWS API. Additionally the controller have to have a role with the following policy to get all required data from AWS:

PolicyDocument:
  Statement:
    - Action: 'sqs:GetQueueUrl'
      Effect: Allow
      Resource: '*'
    - Action: 'sqs:GetQueueAttributes'
      Effect: Allow
      Resource: '*'
    - Action: 'sqs:ListQueues'
      Effect: Allow
      Resource: '*'
    - Action: 'sqs:ListQueueTags'
      Effect: Allow
      Resource: '*'
  Version: 2012-10-17

Supported metrics

Metric	Description	Type	K8s Versions
sqs-queue-length	Scale based on SQS queue length	External	>=1.10

Example

This is an example of an HPA that will scale based on the length of an SQS queue.

apiVersion: autoscaling/v2beta1
kind: HorizontalPodAutoscaler
metadata:
  name: myapp-hpa
spec:
  scaleTargetRef:
    apiVersion: apps/v1
    kind: Deployment
    name: custom-metrics-consumer
  minReplicas: 1
  maxReplicas: 10
  metrics:
  - type: External
    external:
      metricName: sqs-queue-length
      metricSelector:
        matchLabels:
          queue-name: foobar
          region: eu-central-1
      targetAverageValue: 30

The matchLabels are used by kube-metrics-adapter to configure a collector that will get the queue length for an SQS queue named foobar in region eu-central-1.

The AWS account of the queue currently depends on how kube-metrics-adapter is configured to get AWS credentials. The normal assumption is that you run the adapter in a cluster running in the AWS account where the queue is defined. Please open an issue if you would like support for other use cases.

ZMON collector

The ZMON collector allows scaling based on external metrics exposed by ZMON checks.

Supported metrics

Metric	Description	Type	K8s Versions
zmon-check	Scale based on any ZMON check results	External	>=1.10

Example

This is an example of an HPA that will scale based on the specified value exposed by a ZMON check with id 1234.

apiVersion: autoscaling/v2beta1
kind: HorizontalPodAutoscaler
metadata:
  name: myapp-hpa
  annotations:
    # metric-config.<metricType>.<metricName>.<collectorName>/<configKey>
    metric-config.external.zmon-check.zmon/key: "custom.*"
    metric-config.external.zmon-check.zmon/tag-application: "my-custom-app-*"
spec:
  scaleTargetRef:
    apiVersion: apps/v1
    kind: Deployment
    name: custom-metrics-consumer
  minReplicas: 1
  maxReplicas: 10
  metrics:
  - type: External
    external:
      metricName: zmon-check
      metricSelector:
        matchLabels:
          check-id: "1234" # the ZMON check to query for metrics
          key: "custom.value"
          tag-application: my-custom-app
          aggregators: avg # comma separated list of aggregation functions, default: last
          duration: 5m # default: 10m
      targetAverageValue: 30

The check-id specifies the ZMON check to query for the metrics. key specifies the JSON key in the check output to extract the metric value from. E.g. if you have a check which returns the following data:

{
    "custom": {
        "value": 1.0
    },
    "other": {
        "value": 3.0
    }
}

Then the value 1.0 would be returned when the key is defined as custom.value.

The tag-<name> labels defines the tags used for the kariosDB query. In a normal ZMON setup the following tags will be available:

• application
• alias (name of Kubernetes cluster)
• entity - full ZMON entity ID.

aggregators defines the aggregation functions applied to the metrics query. For instance if you define the entity filter type=kube_pod,application=my-custom-app you might get three entities back and then you might want to get an average over the metrics for those three entities. This would be possible by using the avg aggregator. The default aggregator is last which returns only the latest metric point from the query. The supported aggregation functions are avg, dev, count, first, last, max, min, sum, diff. See the KariosDB docs for details.

The duration defines the duration used for the timeseries query. E.g. if you specify a duration of 5m then the query will return metric points for the last 5 minutes and apply the specified aggregation with the same duration .e.g max(5m).

The annotations metric-config.external.zmon-check.zmon/key and metric-config.external.zmon-check.zmon/tag-<name> can be optionally used if you need to define a key or other tag with a "star" query syntax like values.*. This hack is in place because it's not allowed to use * in the metric label definitions. If both annotations and corresponding label is defined, then the annotation takes precedence.