Expose Open Policy Agent/Gatekeeper Constraint Violations for Kubernetes Applications with Prometheus and Grafana

This page summarizes the projects mentioned and recommended in the original post on dev.to

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  • gatekeeper

    🐊 Gatekeeper - Policy Controller for Kubernetes

  • by default and exposes metrics on path ```/metrics``` . It can run locally on your development box as long as you have a valid Kubernetes configuration in your home folder (i.e. if you can run kubectl and have the right permissions). When running on the cluster a ```incluster``` parameter is passed in so that it knows where to look up for the cluster credentials. Exporter program connects to Kubernetes API every 10 seconds to scrape data from Kubernetes API. We've used [this](https://medium.com/teamzerolabs/15-steps-to-write-an-application-prometheus-exporter-in-go-9746b4520e26) blog post as the base for the code. ## Demo Let's go ahead and prepare our components so that we have a Grafana dashboard to show us which constraints have been violated and how the number of violations evolve over time. ### 0) Required tools - [Git](https://git-scm.com/downloads): A git cli is required to checkout the repo and - [Kubectl](https://kubernetes.io/docs/tasks/tools/) and a working K8S cluster - [Ytt](https://carvel.dev/ytt/): This is a very powerful yaml templating tool, in our setup it's used for dynamically overlaying a key/value pair in all constraints. It's similar to Kustomize, it's more flexibel than Kustomize and heavily used in some [Tanzu](https://tanzu.vmware.com/tanzu) products. - [Kustomize](https://kustomize.io/): Gatekeeper-library relies on Kustomize, so we need it too. - [Helm](https://helm.sh/): We will install Prometheus and Grafana using helm - Optional: [Docker](https://www.docker.com/products/docker-desktop): Docker is only optional as we already publish the required image on dockerhub. ### 1) Git submodule update Run ```git submodule update --init``` to download gatekeeper-library dependency. This command will download the [gatekeeper-library](https://github.com/open-policy-agent/gatekeeper-library) dependency into folder ```gatekeeper-library/library``` . ### 2) Install OPA/Gatekeeper If your K8S cluster does not come with Gatekeeper preinstalled, you can use install it as explained [here](https://open-policy-agent.github.io/gatekeeper/website/docs/install/). If you are familiar with helm, the easiest way to install is as follows: ```bash helm repo add gatekeeper https://open-policy-agent.github.io/gatekeeper/charts helm install gatekeeper/gatekeeper --generate-name

  • gatekeeper-library

    πŸ“š The OPA Gatekeeper policy library

  • by default and exposes metrics on path ```/metrics``` . It can run locally on your development box as long as you have a valid Kubernetes configuration in your home folder (i.e. if you can run kubectl and have the right permissions). When running on the cluster a ```incluster``` parameter is passed in so that it knows where to look up for the cluster credentials. Exporter program connects to Kubernetes API every 10 seconds to scrape data from Kubernetes API. We've used [this](https://medium.com/teamzerolabs/15-steps-to-write-an-application-prometheus-exporter-in-go-9746b4520e26) blog post as the base for the code. ## Demo Let's go ahead and prepare our components so that we have a Grafana dashboard to show us which constraints have been violated and how the number of violations evolve over time. ### 0) Required tools - [Git](https://git-scm.com/downloads): A git cli is required to checkout the repo and - [Kubectl](https://kubernetes.io/docs/tasks/tools/) and a working K8S cluster - [Ytt](https://carvel.dev/ytt/): This is a very powerful yaml templating tool, in our setup it's used for dynamically overlaying a key/value pair in all constraints. It's similar to Kustomize, it's more flexibel than Kustomize and heavily used in some [Tanzu](https://tanzu.vmware.com/tanzu) products. - [Kustomize](https://kustomize.io/): Gatekeeper-library relies on Kustomize, so we need it too. - [Helm](https://helm.sh/): We will install Prometheus and Grafana using helm - Optional: [Docker](https://www.docker.com/products/docker-desktop): Docker is only optional as we already publish the required image on dockerhub. ### 1) Git submodule update Run ```git submodule update --init``` to download gatekeeper-library dependency. This command will download the [gatekeeper-library](https://github.com/open-policy-agent/gatekeeper-library) dependency into folder ```gatekeeper-library/library``` . ### 2) Install OPA/Gatekeeper If your K8S cluster does not come with Gatekeeper preinstalled, you can use install it as explained [here](https://open-policy-agent.github.io/gatekeeper/website/docs/install/). If you are familiar with helm, the easiest way to install is as follows: ```bash helm repo add gatekeeper https://open-policy-agent.github.io/gatekeeper/charts helm install gatekeeper/gatekeeper --generate-name

  • InfluxDB

    Power Real-Time Data Analytics at Scale. Get real-time insights from all types of time series data with InfluxDB. Ingest, query, and analyze billions of data points in real-time with unbounded cardinality.

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  • client_golang

    Prometheus instrumentation library for Go applications

  • For exporting/emitting Prometheus metrics, we've written a small program in Golang that uses the prometheus golang library. This program uses the Kubernetes API to discover all constraints applied to the cluster and export certain metrics.

  • helm-charts

    Prometheus community Helm charts

  • For installing Prometheus & Grafana, we will use a helm chart called kube-prometheus-stack. Folder kube-prometheus-stack includes the relevant files for this step.

  • opa-scorecard

  • You can select a target namespace from the drop-down menu on the upper section of the dashboard. We left the dashboard quite simple, obviously you can extend in endless ways and feel free to share your dashboards by making pull requests to this repo.

  • OPA (Open Policy Agent)

    Open Policy Agent (OPA) is an open source, general-purpose policy engine.

  • Open Policy Agent (OPA) and its Kubernetes targeting component Gatekeeper gives you means to enforce policies on Kubernetes clusters. What we mean by policies here, is a formal definition of rules & best practices & behavior that you want to see in your company's Kubernetes clusters. When using OPA, you use a Domain Specific Language called Rego to write policies. By doing this, you leave no room for misinterpretations that would occur if you tried to explain a policy in free text on your company's internal wiki.

  • prometheus

    The Prometheus monitoring system and time series database.

  • We decided to use Prometheus and Grafana for gathering constraint violation metrics and displaying them, as these are good and popular open source tools.

  • SaaSHub

    SaaSHub - Software Alternatives and Reviews. SaaSHub helps you find the best software and product alternatives

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  • helm

    The Kubernetes Package Manager

  • by default and exposes metrics on path ```/metrics``` . It can run locally on your development box as long as you have a valid Kubernetes configuration in your home folder (i.e. if you can run kubectl and have the right permissions). When running on the cluster a ```incluster``` parameter is passed in so that it knows where to look up for the cluster credentials. Exporter program connects to Kubernetes API every 10 seconds to scrape data from Kubernetes API. We've used [this](https://medium.com/teamzerolabs/15-steps-to-write-an-application-prometheus-exporter-in-go-9746b4520e26) blog post as the base for the code. ## Demo Let's go ahead and prepare our components so that we have a Grafana dashboard to show us which constraints have been violated and how the number of violations evolve over time. ### 0) Required tools - [Git](https://git-scm.com/downloads): A git cli is required to checkout the repo and - [Kubectl](https://kubernetes.io/docs/tasks/tools/) and a working K8S cluster - [Ytt](https://carvel.dev/ytt/): This is a very powerful yaml templating tool, in our setup it's used for dynamically overlaying a key/value pair in all constraints. It's similar to Kustomize, it's more flexibel than Kustomize and heavily used in some [Tanzu](https://tanzu.vmware.com/tanzu) products. - [Kustomize](https://kustomize.io/): Gatekeeper-library relies on Kustomize, so we need it too. - [Helm](https://helm.sh/): We will install Prometheus and Grafana using helm - Optional: [Docker](https://www.docker.com/products/docker-desktop): Docker is only optional as we already publish the required image on dockerhub. ### 1) Git submodule update Run ```git submodule update --init``` to download gatekeeper-library dependency. This command will download the [gatekeeper-library](https://github.com/open-policy-agent/gatekeeper-library) dependency into folder ```gatekeeper-library/library``` . ### 2) Install OPA/Gatekeeper If your K8S cluster does not come with Gatekeeper preinstalled, you can use install it as explained [here](https://open-policy-agent.github.io/gatekeeper/website/docs/install/). If you are familiar with helm, the easiest way to install is as follows: ```bash helm repo add gatekeeper https://open-policy-agent.github.io/gatekeeper/charts helm install gatekeeper/gatekeeper --generate-name

  • Grafana

    The open and composable observability and data visualization platform. Visualize metrics, logs, and traces from multiple sources like Prometheus, Loki, Elasticsearch, InfluxDB, Postgres and many more.

  • We decided to use Prometheus and Grafana for gathering constraint violation metrics and displaying them, as these are good and popular open source tools.

NOTE: The number of mentions on this list indicates mentions on common posts plus user suggested alternatives. Hence, a higher number means a more popular project.

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