SigNoz

This guide covers the steps to install SigNoz OpenTelemetry (Otel) collector on your Kubernetes cluster using Argonaut.

SigNoz is an open-source application performance monitoring tool that helps you monitor your applications and troubleshoot problems. SigNoz uses distributed tracing to gain visibility into your software stack. It helps teams with things like monitoring application metrics, monitoring infrastructure metrics, tracking user requests across services, and more. To know more about the architecture of SigNoz and its components in detail, go over the following documentation.

SigNoz collects data using OpenTelemetry, an open-source observability solution. Therefore, SigNoz supports all the frameworks and languages supported by OpenTelemetry.

Prerequisites for installation

Managed Nodes running Linux. Windows is not supported Yet
Kubectl access to Cluster
x86-64/amd64 architecture resource(s) supported. Arm64 is not in support
CertManager
Argonaut account with an active environment
Kubernetes cluster v1.21 and above & Helm 3.8+ and above (Argonaut maintains the latest stable versions)
SigNoz account that is setup

Components installed

The SigNoz Helm chart will install the following components into your Kubernetes cluster:

Query Service (backend service)
Web UI (frontend)
ClickHouse (datastore)
OpenTelemetry collector
Alertmanager

Setup Library App in Argonaut

You can add SigNoz to Argonaut as a custom third-party Library app. This will then be available in your cluster under Add-Ons.

Add the OTEL collector

Click on the Application + and the From Library button.
Choose Custom-Apps under configuration.
Ensure the selected environment is correct, then select the cluster you want to deploy the agent to.
Set the namespace you want to deploy the ingestion agent to be tools.
Set the release name of the application as signoz-agent.
Set the chart name as signoz.
Set the chart repository as https://charts.signoz.io.
Set the chart version to 0.7.0.

Click on load values.yaml.

You will now see all the relevant values for the deployment. The code below shows the contents of values.yaml. Here are the other chart override options available.

global:
storageClass: gp2
alertmanager:
  replicaCount: 2
clickhouse:
  cloud: aws
  allowedNetworkIps:
    - "::/0"
  persistence:
    enabled: true
frontend:
  ingress:
    enabled: true
    className: nginx
    annotations:
      kubernetes.io/tls-acme: "true"
      cert-manager.io/cluster-issuer: letsencrypt-prod
    hosts:
      - host: <SIGNOZ_UI_DNS_NAME> #Should be a valid DNS name
        paths:
          - path: /
            pathType: ImplementationSpecific
            port: 3301
    tls:
      - secretName: signoz-tls
        hosts:
          - <SIGNOZ_UI_DNS_NAME>
otelCollector:
  ingress:
    enabled: true
    className: nginx
    annotations:
      cert-manager.io/cluster-issuer: letsencrypt-prod
      nginx.ingress.kubernetes.io/ssl-redirect: "true"
      nginx.ingress.kubernetes.io/backend-protocol: "GRPC"
      kubernetes.io/tls-acme: "true"
    hosts:
      - host: <SIGNOZ_OTEL_DNS_NAME>
        paths:
          - path: /
            pathType: ImplementationSpecific
            port: 4317
    tls:
      - secretName: signoz-otel-tls
        hosts:
          - <SIGNOZ_OTEL_DNS_NAME>

Click on the Deploy button to deploy the application. This could take up to 2 minutes.
Once installed, you should see the signoz-agent in your environment’s Add-ons section.

Issue TLS certificates for the endpoints

The next step is to expose two endpoints,

UI: To visualize and query the data collected by Otel collectors
Secure Otel endpoint to connect and publish metrics in another cluster

Here’s how to set a secure endpoint.

A secure endpoint needs access to:

Cert-manager for issuing certificates
Nginx Controller
Route53 for DNS

Create DNS records

Before anything, let’s create DNS records in Route53 for accessing the endpoints. I am going with the following, the value for these DNS records should be ingress-nginx controller's loadbalancer DNS.

signoz.xyz.com ( To access SigNoz UI )
signoz-otel.xyz.com ( To access SigNoz Otel endpoint )

Once the above steps are completed successfully, you should be able to access the app. The page looks like below.

From this page, add your account credentials and Login. or Create an account.

Setting up dashboards

You can create the dashboards using UI. The SigNoz team has pre-built dashboard JSON files available on their GitHub.
Copy the JSON from the repo, go to the SigNoz UI, and select the import option.
Click Dashboard —-> New Dashboard —---> Import JSON
The dashboard looks like below.

Publish metrics of the main cluster

Now, it’s time to switch to another cluster and publish the metrics of the main cluster.

💡 Note: The SigNoz Otel endpoint is a secure endpoint.

Thus, we need the SSL cert and key of the Otel endpoint.

To get the tls.crt, tls.key decrypt the SigNoz Otel secret. The secretname which we used which issuing cert is “signoz-otel-tls”. Keep the tls.crt, tls.key handy which we need in further steps.

Installing client in cluster-2

Follow the final steps to finish the installation.

Create a new cluster from Argonaut UI.
Click on the Application + and the From Library button.
Choose Custom-Apps under configuration.
Enter the following information. The k8s-infra helm chart installs Otel agent, collector deployment.
Namespace: signoz-client-components
Release name: signozclient
Chart name: k8s-infra
Repo URL: https://charts.signoz.io
💡 Docs to know more about k8s-infra helm chart.

Load values.yaml and fill in the following information. Replace the DNS Name, certificate, and private key values here with the one for your cluster. Leave the rest of the values as-is.

otelCollectorEndpoint: <SIGNOZ_OTEL_DNS_NAME>:443
otelInsecure: false

otelTlsSecrets:
  enabled: true
  path: /secrets
  existingSecretName:

  certificate: |
    <INCLUDE_CERTIFICATE_HERE>
  key: |
    <INCLUDE_PRIVATE_KEY_HERE>

Click on Install. The SigNoz client is now installed in your cluster in just a few minutes.

Conclusion

You should now be able to see the logs of client cluster and metrics of the client cluster nodes.

Find more info on installing custom apps using helm charts, like setting up Docusaurus in under 5 minutes using Argonaut.

Prerequisites for installation​

Components installed​

Setup Library App in Argonaut​

Add the OTEL collector​

Issue TLS certificates for the endpoints​

Create DNS records​

Setting up dashboards​

Publish metrics of the main cluster​

Installing client in cluster-2​

Conclusion​