Menu

Caution

Grafana Alloy is the new name for our distribution of the OTel collector. Grafana Agent has been deprecated and is in Long-Term Support (LTS) through October 31, 2025. Grafana Agent will reach an End-of-Life (EOL) on November 1, 2025. Read more about why we recommend migrating to Grafana Alloy.

Important: This documentation is about an older version. It's relevant only to the release noted, many of the features and functions have been updated or replaced. Please view the current version.

Documentationbreadcrumb arrow Grafana Agentbreadcrumb arrow Static mode Kubernetes operator
Open source RSS

Static mode Kubernetes operator (Beta)

Grafana Agent Operator is a Kubernetes operator for the static mode of Grafana Agent. It makes it easier to deploy and configure static mode to collect telemetry data from Kubernetes resources.

Grafana Agent Operator supports consuming various custom resources for telemetry collection:

  • Prometheus Operator ServiceMonitor resources for collecting metrics from Kubernetes Services.
  • Prometheus Operator PodMonitor resources for collecting metrics from Kubernetes Pods.
  • Prometheus Operator Probe resources for collecting metrics from Kubernetes Ingresses.
  • Custom PodLogs resources for collecting logs.

Note

Grafana Agent Operator does not collect traces.

Grafana Agent Operator is currently in Beta, and is subject to change or being removed with functionality which covers the same use case.

Note

If you are shipping your data to Grafana Cloud, use Kubernetes Monitoring to set up Agent Operator. Kubernetes Monitoring provides a simplified approach and preconfigured dashboards and alerts.

Grafana Agent Operator uses additional custom resources to manage the deployment and configuration of Grafana Agents running in static mode. In addition to the supported custom resources, you can also provide your own Service Discovery (SD) configurations to collect metrics from other types of sources.

Grafana Agent Operator is particularly useful for Helm users, where manually writing generic service discovery to match all of your chart installations can be difficult, or where manually writing a specific SD for each chart installation can be tedious.

The following sections describe how to use Grafana Agent Operator:

TopicDescribes
Configure Kubernetes Monitoring using Agent OperatorUse the Kubernetes Monitoring solution to set up monitoring of your Kubernetes cluster and to install preconfigured dashboards and alerts.
Install Grafana Agent Operator with HelmHow to deploy the Grafana Agent Operator into your Kubernetes cluster using the grafana-agent-operator Helm chart.
Install Grafana Agent OperatorHow to deploy the Grafana Agent Operator into your Kubernetes cluster without using Helm.
Deploy the Grafana Agent Operator resourcesHow to roll out the Grafana Agent Operator custom resources, needed to begin monitoring your cluster. Complete this procedure after installing Grafana Agent Operator—either with or without Helm.
Grafana Agent Operator architectureLearn about the resources used by Agent Operator to collect telemetry data and how it discovers the hierarchy of custom resources, continually reconciling the hierarchy.
Set up Agent Operator integrationsLearn how to set up node-exporter and mysqld-exporter integrations.