Installation

The standard installation uses Helm 3 and the robusta-cli, but alternative methods are described below.

Configuring and installing Robusta takes 97.68 seconds on a 10 node cluster 1. You can also install on minikube or KIND. Uninstalling takes one command, so go ahead and try!

Have questions?

Ask us on Slack or open a GitHub issue

We will now configure Robusta in your cluster. For this we need to install Robusta, and also connect at least one destination ("sink"), and at least one source ("triggers").

Creating the config file

  1. To configure robusta, the Robusta CLI is required. Choose one of the installation methods below.

Installation Methods

pip install -U robusta-cli --no-cache

Common Errors

  • Python 3.7 or higher is required

  • If you are using a system such as macOS that includes both Python 2 and Python 3, run pip3 instead of pip.

  • Errors about tiller mean you are running Helm 2, not Helm 3

For Windows please use WSL.

  • Download robusta script and give it executable permissions:

curl -fsSL -o robusta https://docs.robusta.dev/master/_static/robusta
chmod +x robusta

  • Use the script, for example:

./robusta version

Common Errors

  • Docker daemon is required.

  1. Generate a Robusta configuration. This will setup Slack and other integrations. We highly recommend enabling the cloud UI so you can see all features in action.

If you’d like to send Robusta messages to additional destinations (Discord, Telegram etc.). See Sink configuration.

 robusta gen-config

Robusta on Minikube

We don't recommend installing Robusta on Minikube because of a recent issue with minikube. More details here.

Robusta not in PATH

if you get "command not found: robusta", see Common errors

  1. Save generated_values.yaml, somewhere safe. This is your Helm values.yaml file.

Installing on multiple clusters

Use the same generated_values.yaml for all your clusters (dev, prod, etc..). There's no need to run gen-config again.

Standard Installation

  1. Add Robusta's chart repository:

 helm repo add robusta https://robusta-charts.storage.googleapis.com && helm repo update

  1. Specify your cluster's name and install Robusta using Helm. On some clusters this can take a while 2, so don't panic if it appears stuck:

Test clusters (e.g Kind, MiniKube, Colima)

Test clusters tend to have fewer resources. To lower the resource requests of Robusta, include --set isSmallCluster=true at the end of the install command.

 helm install robusta robusta/robusta -f ./generated_values.yaml --set clusterName=<YOUR_CLUSTER_NAME> # --set isSmallCluster=true

  1. Verify the two Robusta pods and running with no errors in the logs:

kubectl get pods -A | grep robusta
robusta logs

Seeing Robusta in action

By default, Robusta sends notifications when Kubernetes pods crash.

  1. Create a crashing pod:

kubectl apply -f https://gist.githubusercontent.com/robusta-lab/283609047306dc1f05cf59806ade30b6/raw

  1. Verify that the pod is actually crashing:

$ kubectl get pods -A
NAME                            READY   STATUS             RESTARTS   AGE
crashpod-64d8fbfd-s2dvn         0/1     CrashLoopBackOff   1          7s

  1. Once the pod has reached two restarts, check your Slack channel for a message about the crashing pod.

Example Slack Message

  1. Open the Robusta UI (if you enabled it) and look for the same message there.

  2. Clean up the crashing pod:

kubectl delete deployment crashpod

Installing a second cluster

When installing a second cluster on the same account, there's no need to run robusta gen-config again.

Using your existing generated_values.yaml and the new clusterName run:

 helm install robusta robusta/robusta -f ./generated_values.yaml --set clusterName=<YOUR_CLUSTER_NAME> # --set isSmallCluster=true

Where is my generated_values.yaml?

If you have lost your generated_values.yaml file, you can extract it from any cluster running Robusta.

In that case, clusterName and isSmallCluster may be already in generated_values.yaml. Make sure to remove them before installing on the new cluster.

helm get values -o yaml robusta | grep -v clusterName: | grep -v isSmallCluster: > generated_values.yaml

Next Steps

  1. Define your first automation

  2. Add your first Prometheus enrichment

Footnotes

1

See this great video on YouTube where a community member installs Robusta with a stopwatch. If you beat his time by more than 30% and document it, we'll send you a Robusta mug too.

2

AWS EKS, we're looking at you!

Additional Installation Methods

Installing with GitOps

Follow the instructions above to generate generated_values.yaml. Commit it to git and use ArgoCD or your favorite tool to install.

Installing without the Robusta CLI

Using the cli is totally optional. If you prefer, you can skip the CLI and fetch the default Helm values from the helm chart:

helm repo add robusta https://robusta-charts.storage.googleapis.com && helm repo update
helm show values robusta/robusta

Most values are documented in the Configuration Guide

Do not use helm/robusta/values.yaml in the GitHub repo. It has some empty placeholders which are replaced during our release process.

Installing in a different namespace

Create a namespace robusta and install robusta in the new namespace using:

helm install robusta robusta/robusta -f ./generated_values.yaml -n robusta --create-namespace

Verify that Robusta installed two deployments in the robusta namespace:

 kubectl get pods -n robusta
Installing on OpenShift

You will need to run one additional command:

 oc adm policy add-scc-to-user anyuid -z robusta-runner-service-account

It's possible to reduce the permissions more. Please feel free to open a PR suggesting something more minimal