long-term-storage.md

To enable 90+ days of data retention in Kubecost, we recommend deploying with durable storage enabled. We provide two options for doing this: 1) in your cluster and 2) out of cluster. This functionality also powers the Enterprise multi-cluster view, where data across clusters can be viewed in aggregate, as well as simple backup & restore capabilities.

Note: this feature today requires an Enterprise license.

Option A: In cluster storage (Postgres)

To enable Postgres-based long-term storage, complete the following:

1. Helm chart configuration -- in values.yaml set the remoteWrite.postgres.enabled attribute to true. The default backing disk is 200gb but this can also be directly configured in values.yaml.

2. Verify successful install -- Deploy or upgrade via install instructions at http://kubecost.com/install, passing this updated values.yaml file, and verify pods with the prefix kubecost-cost-analyzer-adapter and kubecost-cost-analyzer-postgres are Running.

3. Confirm data is availabile

       Vist this endpoint http://<kubecost-address>/model/costDataModelRangeLarge

       Here's an example use: http://localhost:9090/model/costDataModelRangeLarge

Option B: Out of cluster storage (Thanos)

Thanos-based durable storage provides long-term storage written directly to a user-controlled bucket (e.g. S3 or GCS bucket) and can be enabled with the following steps:

Step 1: Create object store yaml file

This step creates a yaml file that contains your durable storage target (e.g. GCS, S3, etc.) configuration and access credentials. The details of this file are documented thoroughly in Thanos documentation: https://thanos.io/storage.md/

Google Cloud Storage

Start by creating a new Google Cloud Storage bucket, the following example uses a bucket named thanos-bucket. Next, download a service account JSON file from Google's service account manager (instructions).

Now create a yaml file named object-store.yaml with contents similar to the following:

type: GCS
config:
  bucket: "thanos-bucket"
  service_account: |-
    {
      "type": "service_account",
      "project_id": "...",
      "private_key_id": "...",
      "private_key": "...",
      "client_email": "...",
      "client_id": "...",
      "auth_uri": "https://accounts.google.com/o/oauth2/auth",
      "token_uri": "https://oauth2.googleapis.com/token",
      "auth_provider_x509_cert_url": "https://www.googleapis.com/oauth2/v1/certs",
      "client_x509_cert_url": ""
    }

Note: given that this is yaml, it requires this specific indention.

AWS/S3

Start by creating a new S3 bucket with all public access blocked. No other bucket configuration changes should be required. The following example uses a bucket named kc-thanos-store.

Next, add an IAM policy to access this bucket (instructions).

Now create a yaml file named object-store.yaml with contents similar to the following example. See region to endpoint mappings here: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/general/latest/gr/rande.html#s3_region

type: S3
config:
  bucket: "kc-thanos-store"
  endpoint: "s3.amazonaws.com"
  region: "us-east-1"
  access_key: "AKIAXW6UVLRRTDSCCU4D"
  insecure: false
  signature_version2: false
  encrypt_sse: false
  secret_key: "<your-secret-key>"
  put_user_metadata: {}
  http_config:
    idle_conn_timeout: 90s
    response_header_timeout: 2m
    insecure_skip_verify: false
  trace:
    enable: true
  part_size: 134217728

Note: given that this is yaml, it requires this specific indention.

Step 2: Create object store secret

The final step prior to installation is to create a secret with the yaml file generated in the previous step:

$ kubectl create secret generic kubecost-thanos -n kubecost --from-file=./object-store.yaml

Step 3: Deploying Kubecost with Thanos

The Thanos subchart includes thanos-bucket, thanos-query, thanos-store, thanos-compact, and service discovery for thanos-sidecar. These components are recommended when deploying Thanos on multiple clusters.

These values can be adjusted under the thanos block in values-thanos.yaml - Available options can be observed here: thanos/values.yaml

It's important to note that when running helm install, you must provide the base values.yaml followed by the override values-thanos.yaml. For example:

$ helm install kubecost/cost-analyzer \
    --name kubecost \
    --namespace kubecost \
    -f values.yaml \
    -f values-thanos.yaml

Your deployment should now have Thanos enabled!

Note: the thanos-store pod is by default configured to request 2 Gb in memory.

Verify Installation
In order to verify a correct installation, start by ensuring all pods are running without issue. If the pods mentioned above are not running successfully, then view pod logs for more detail. A common error is as follows, which means you do not have the correct access to the supplied bucket:

thanos-svc-account@project-227514.iam.gserviceaccount.com does not have storage.objects.list access to thanos-bucket., forbidden"

Assuming pods are running, use port forwarding to connect to the thanos-query-http endpoint:

$ kubectl port-forward svc/kubecost-thanos-query-http 8080:10902 --namespace kubecost

Then navigate to http://localhost:8080 in your browser. This page should look very similar to the Prometheus console.

If you navigate to the Stores using the top navigation bar, you should be able to see the status of both the thanos-store and thanos-sidecar which accompanied prometheus server:

Also note that the sidecar should identify with the unique cluster_id provided in your values.yaml in the previous step. Default value is cluster-one.

The default retention period for when data is moved into the object storage is currently 2h - This configuration is based on Thanos suggested values. So it will be at least 2 hours before data is stored in the provided bucket.

Instead of waiting 2h to ensure that thanos was configured correctly, the default log level for the thanos workloads is debug (it's very light logging even on debug). You can get logs for the thanos-sidecar, which is part of the prometheus-server container, and thanos-store. The logs should give you a clear indication whether or not there was a problem consuming the secret and what the issue is.