Automation basics

To demonstrate how Robusta automations work, we will configure an automation that sends Slack messages when deployments change.

Note

If you use the Robusta UI, changes like this are already tracked in the UI by default.

This tutorial explains how that feature works under the hood.

  1. Add the following to your generated_values.yaml:

customPlaybooks:
- triggers:
    - on_deployment_update: {}
  actions:
    - resource_babysitter:
        omitted_fields: []
        fields_to_monitor: ["spec.replicas"]
  1. Perform an upgrade with Helm to apply the new configuration

helm upgrade robusta robusta/robusta --values=generated_values.yaml

Seeing the automation in action

  1. Scale one of your deployments:

kubectl scale --replicas NEW_REPLICAS_COUNT deployments/DEPLOYMENT_NAME
  1. Check the slack channel you configured when installing Robusta:

If you setup the Robusta UI, it will appear in the timeline of all alerts and changes:

You can click to see the diff:

How the automation works

Every automation has three parts.

triggers:

We chose on_deployment_update which runs whenever Kubernetes Deployments are updated

actions:

We chose Resource babysitter which is a builtin action. That action has a parameter fields_to_monitor.

sinks:

We didn't configure any sinks, so output is sent to the default sink. This is usually Slack and/or the Robusta UI.

Further customization

Try changing the configuration to monitors changes to a deployment's image tag.

Cleanup

If you use the Robusta UI, you should disable the automation you configured in this tutorial to prevent duplicates.

A similar automation is already configured by default.