CloudZero Agent for Kubernetes

Install and configure the CloudZero Agent for Kubernetes

Overview

The CloudZero Agent for Kubernetes collects and forwards container metrics to the CloudZero Platform, combining them with data from your cloud provider to determine how to allocate your Kubernetes costs.

Latest version: GitHub release

Detailed documentation and examples are provided in our GitHub repository. You can also learn how to enable release notifications.

Supported Kubernetes Installations

The CloudZero Agent supports the following Kubernetes installations:

  • Self-managed Kubernetes in AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud
  • AWS Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS)
  • Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)
  • Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE)

CloudZero Agent Setup

Prerequisites

Install or Update Agent

See the README for instructions on installing and updating the CloudZero Agent for Kubernetes.

Validate Installation

See Validating the Deployment for instructions on validating and troubleshooting installation.

View CloudZero Agent for Kubernetes Cost Data

After CloudZero has processed your Kubernetes cost allocation data, you can view it in CloudZero. For example, the following image shows Kubernetes cost data for a custom dimension called CloudZero Agent, grouped by cluster:

Viewing Kubernetes cost data grouped by cluster

Technical Implementation Details

The CloudZero Agent for Kubernetes pulls metrics from kube-state-metrics and cAdvisor projects and forwards the metrics to CloudZero using Prometheus Remote Write, as shown in the following architecture diagram:

Architecture diagram of the CloudZero Agent for Kubernetes

CloudZero combines container metrics from Prometheus with your cloud service provider billing data to automatically allocate costs to the workloads being orchestrated by Kubernetes. We calculate the cost of each Kubernetes workload within the architecture, and then re-aggregate them to attribute costs to other hierarchical Kubernetes concepts, such as namespaces and clusters.

📘

Configuring Cluster Resources for the CloudZero Agent

To learn how to optimally configure your cluster's resources for agent deployment, see the CloudZero Agent Deployment Sizing Guide.