--- title: "Configure monitoring and alerting | Grafana Loki documentation" description: "setup monitoring and alerts for the Helm chart" --- > For a curated documentation index, see [llms.txt](/llms.txt). For the complete documentation index, see [llms-full.txt](/llms-full.txt). # Configure monitoring and alerting By default this Helm Chart configures meta-monitoring of metrics (service monitoring) and logs (self monitoring). This topic will walk you through configuring monitoring using a monitoring solution local to the same cluster where Loki is installed. The `ServiceMonitor` resource works with either the Prometheus Operator or the Grafana Agent Operator, and defines how Loki’s metrics should be scraped. Scraping this Loki cluster using the scrape config defined in the `SerivceMonitor` resource is required for the included dashboards to work. A `MetricsInstance` can be configured to write the metrics to a remote Prometheus instance such as Grafana Cloud Metrics. *Self monitoring* is enabled by default. This will deploy a `GrafanaAgent`, `LogsInstance`, and `PodLogs` resource which will instruct the Grafana Agent Operator (installed seperately) on how to scrape this Loki cluster’s logs and send them back to itself. Scraping this Loki cluster using the scrape config defined in the `PodLogs` resource is required for the included dashboards to work. Rules and alerts are automatically deployed. **Before you begin:** - Helm 3 or above. See [Installing Helm](https://helm.sh/docs/intro/install/). - A running Kubernetes cluster with a running Loki deployment. - A running Grafana instance. - A running Prometheus Operator installed using the `kube-prometheus-stack` Helm chart. **Prometheus Operator Prequisites** The dashboards require certain metric labels to display Kubernetes metrics. The best way to accomplish this is to install the `kube-prometheus-stack` Helm chart with the following values file, replacing `CLUSTER_NAME` with the name of your cluster. The cluster name is what you specify during the helm installation, so a cluster installed with the command `helm install loki-cluster grafana/loki` would be called `loki-cluster`. YAML ![Copy code to clipboard](/media/images/icons/icon-copy-small-2.svg) Copy ```yaml kubelet: serviceMonitor: cAdvisorRelabelings: - action: replace replacement: targetLabel: cluster - targetLabel: metrics_path sourceLabels: - "__metrics_path__" - targetLabel: "instance" sourceLabels: - "node" defaultRules: additionalRuleLabels: cluster: "kube-state-metrics": prometheus: monitor: relabelings: - action: replace replacement: targetLabel: cluster - targetLabel: "instance" sourceLabels: - "__meta_kubernetes_pod_node_name" "prometheus-node-exporter": prometheus: monitor: relabelings: - action: replace replacement: targetLabel: cluster - targetLabel: "instance" sourceLabels: - "__meta_kubernetes_pod_node_name" prometheus: monitor: relabelings: - action: replace replacement: targetLabel: cluster ``` The `kube-prometheus-stack` installs `ServiceMonitor` and `PrometheusRule` resources for monitoring Kubernetes, and it depends on the `kube-state-metrics` and `prometheus-node-exporter` helm charts which also install `ServiceMonitor` resources for collecting `kubelet` and `node-exporter` metrics. The above values file adds the necessary additional labels required for these metrics to work with the included dashboards. If you are using this helm chart in an environment which does not allow for the installation of `kube-prometheus-stack` or custom CRDs, you should run `helm template` on the `kube-prometheus-stack` helm chart with the above values file, and review all generated `ServiceMonitor` and `PrometheusRule` resources. These resources may have to be modified with the correct ports and selectors to find the various services such as `kubelet` and `node-exporter` in your environment. **To install the dashboards:** 1. Dashboards are enabled by default. Set `monitoring.dashboards.namespace` to the namespace of the Grafana instance if it is in a different namespace than this Loki cluster. 2. Dashbards must be mounted to your Grafana container. The dashboards are in `ConfigMap`s named `loki-dashboards-1` and `loki-dashboards-2` for Loki, and `enterprise-logs-dashboards-1` and `enterprise-logs-dashboards-2` for GEL. Mount them to `/var/lib/grafana/dashboards/loki-1` and `/var/lib/grafana/dashboards/loki-2` in your Grafana container. 3. Create a dashboard provisioning file called `dashboards.yaml` in `/etc/grafana/provisioning/dashboards` of your Grafana container with the following contents (*note*: you may need to edit the `orgId`): YAML ![Copy code to clipboard](/media/images/icons/icon-copy-small-2.svg) Copy ```yaml --- apiVersion: 1 providers: - disableDeletion: true editable: false folder: Loki name: loki-1 options: path: /var/lib/grafana/dashboards/loki-1 orgId: 1 type: file - disableDeletion: true editable: false folder: Loki name: loki-2 options: path: /var/lib/grafana/dashboards/loki-2 orgId: 1 type: file ``` **To add add additional Prometheus rules:** 1. Modify the configuration file `values.yaml`: YAML ![Copy code to clipboard](/media/images/icons/icon-copy-small-2.svg) Copy ```yaml monitoring: rules: additionalGroups: - name: loki-rules rules: - record: job:loki_request_duration_seconds_bucket:sum_rate expr: sum(rate(loki_request_duration_seconds_bucket[1m])) by (le, job) - record: job_route:loki_request_duration_seconds_bucket:sum_rate expr: sum(rate(loki_request_duration_seconds_bucket[1m])) by (le, job, route) - record: node_namespace_pod_container:container_cpu_usage_seconds_total:sum_rate expr: sum(rate(container_cpu_usage_seconds_total[1m])) by (node, namespace, pod, container) ``` **To disable monitoring:** 1. Modify the configuration file `values.yaml`: YAML ![Copy code to clipboard](/media/images/icons/icon-copy-small-2.svg) Copy ```yaml selfMonitoring: enabled: false serviceMonitor: enabled: false ``` **To use a remote Prometheus and Loki instance such as Grafana Cloud** 1. Create a `secrets.yaml` file with credentials to access the Grafana Cloud services: YAML ![Copy code to clipboard](/media/images/icons/icon-copy-small-2.svg) Copy ```yaml --- apiVersion: v1 kind: Secret metadata: name: primary-credentials-metrics namespace: default stringData: username: "" password: "" --- apiVersion: v1 kind: Secret metadata: name: primary-credentials-logs namespace: default stringData: username: "" password: "" ``` 2. Add the secret to Kubernetes with `kubectl create -f secret.yaml`. 3. Add a `remoteWrite` section to `serviceMonitor` in `values.yaml`: YAML ![Copy code to clipboard](/media/images/icons/icon-copy-small-2.svg) Copy ```yaml monitoring: ... serviceMonitor: enabled: true ... metricsInstance: remoteWrite: - url: basicAuth: username: name: primary-credentials-metrics key: username password: name: primary-credentials-metrics key: password ``` 4. Add a client to `monitoring.selfMonitoring.logsInstance.clients`: YAML ![Copy code to clipboard](/media/images/icons/icon-copy-small-2.svg) Copy ```yaml monitoring: --- selfMonitoring: enabled: true logsInstance: clients: - url: basicAuth: username: name: primary-credentials-logs key: username password: name: primary-credentials-logs key: password lokiCanary: enabled: false ``` 5. Install the `Loki meta-motoring` connection on Grafana Cloud.