Add Kubernetes metadata

The add_kubernetes_metadata processor annotates each event with relevant metadata based on which Kubernetes pod the event originated from. This processor only adds metadata to the events that do not have it yet present.

At startup, it detects an in_cluster environment and caches the Kubernetes-related metadata. Events are only annotated if a valid configuration is detected. If it’s not able to detect a valid Kubernetes configuration, the events are not annotated with Kubernetes-related metadata.

Each event is annotated with:

In addition, the node and namespace metadata are added to the pod metadata.

The add_kubernetes_metadata processor has two basic building blocks:

Indexers use pod metadata to create unique identifiers for each one of the pods. These identifiers help to correlate the metadata of the observed pods with actual events. For example, the ip_port indexer can take a Kubernetes pod and create identifiers for it based on all its pod_ip:container_port combinations.

Matchers use information in events to construct lookup keys that match the identifiers created by the indexers. For example, when the fields matcher takes ["metricset.host"] as a lookup field, it would construct a lookup key with the value of the field metricset.host. When one of these lookup keys matches with one of the identifiers, the event is enriched with the metadata of the identified pod.

When add_kubernetes_metadata is used with Metricbeat, it uses the ip_port indexer and the fields matcher with the metricset.host field. So events that contain a metricset.host field are enriched with metadata of the pods that exposes the same port in the same IP.

This behaviour can be disabled by disabling default indexers and matchers in the configuration:

processors:
  - add_kubernetes_metadata:
      default_indexers.enabled: false
      default_matchers.enabled: false

You can find more information about the available indexers and matchers, and some examples in Indexers and matchers.

The configuration below enables the processor when metricbeat is run as a pod in Kubernetes.

processors:
  - add_kubernetes_metadata:
      #labels.dedot: true
      #annotations.dedot: true

The configuration below enables the processor on a Beat running as a process on the Kubernetes node.

processors:
  - add_kubernetes_metadata:
      host: <hostname>
      # If kube_config is not set, KUBECONFIG environment variable will be checked
      # and if not present it will fall back to InCluster
      kube_config: $Metricbeat Reference [8.16]/.kube/config
      #labels.dedot: true
      #annotations.dedot: true

The configuration below has the default indexers and matchers disabled and enables ones that the user is interested in.

processors:
  - add_kubernetes_metadata:
      host: <hostname>
      # If kube_config is not set, KUBECONFIG environment variable will be checked
      # and if not present it will fall back to InCluster
      kube_config: ~/.kube/config
      default_indexers.enabled: false
      default_matchers.enabled: false
      indexers:
        - ip_port:
      matchers:
        - fields:
            lookup_fields: ["metricset.host"]
      #labels.dedot: true
      #annotations.dedot: true

The add_kubernetes_metadata processor has the following configuration settings:

      add_resource_metadata:
        namespace:
          include_labels: ["namespacelabel1"]
          #labels.dedot: true
          #annotations.dedot: true
        node:
          include_labels: ["nodelabel2"]
          include_annotations: ["nodeannotation1"]
          #labels.dedot: true
          #annotations.dedot: true
        deployment: false
        cronjob: false

      kube_client_options:
        qps: 5
        burst: 10

processors:
- add_kubernetes_metadata:
    ...
    default_indexers.enabled: false
    default_matchers.enabled: false
    indexers:
      - ip_port:
    matchers:
      - field_format:
          format: '%{[destination.ip]}:%{[destination.port]}'

processors:
- add_kubernetes_metadata:
    ...
    default_indexers.enabled: false
    default_matchers.enabled: false
    indexers:
      - ip_port:
    matchers:
      - fields:
          lookup_fields: ['destination.ip', 'server.ip']