Component C84, C88, C92 – InsightHub
By Raj Marni. March 26, 2025. Revised. Version: 0.0.01
1. Overview
InsightHub is a meta-component focused on monitoring, metrics, and visualization for Kubernetes clusters within the k8or Orbit ecosystem. It consolidates three core components:
C84 – K8rix Dashboard: A native dashboard offering at-a-glance resource usage and status information for K3s clusters.
C88 – ClusterWatch: A metrics collection and alerting solution that scrapes and stores time-series data from Kubernetes resources and applications.
C92 – HelloScope: A powerful data visualization tool that builds interactive dashboards and graphs based on ClusterWatch metrics (and other data sources).
Together, these components provide a holistic view of cluster health, resource consumption, and overall system performance.
2. Key Functions
Cluster Resource Monitoring (C84 – K8rix Dashboard)
Real-Time Insights: Provides a native, GUI-driven experience to view CPU, memory, and other utilization metrics for the K3s cluster’s nodes and workloads.
Operational Control: Allows basic management actions (e.g., viewing pod logs, restarting pods) directly from a dashboard interface.
Metrics Collection & Alerting (C88 – ClusterWatch)
Metrics Scraping: Continuously gathers time-series data from Kubernetes objects (pods, nodes), as well as custom application metrics.
Rules & Alerts: Defines thresholds (e.g., CPU usage, memory consumption) and sends alerts if metrics exceed preset limits.
Storage & Retention: Archives historical data for analysis and capacity planning.
Data Visualization (C92 – HelloScope)
Dashboarding: Creates customizable dashboards to represent real-time and historical data from ClusterWatch, enabling quick diagnoses of performance bottlenecks or spikes in resource usage.
Query & Exploration: Lets users build, save, and share queries/graphs for deeper exploration into cluster behavior.
3. Architecture & Interactions
Internal Grouping
C84 – K8rix Dashboard: Provides a UI for cluster resource usage and management tasks.
C88 – ClusterWatch: Operates as a metrics engine, scraping data from cluster endpoints and storing them in a time-series database.
C92 – HelloScope: Connects to ClusterWatch (and optionally other data sources) to render metrics in charts, gauges, and alerts.
External Interactions
Cluster Plane (K3s Clusters):
Metrics Extraction: ClusterWatch (C88) scrapes endpoints from workloads and system components.
Dashboard Access: C84 (Kubernetes Dashboard) communicates with the cluster’s API server for real-time state data.
Orbit Plane Services:
Integration: Other k8or Orbit components may query metrics (e.g., for advanced scheduling or scaling decisions) or utilize dashboards for operational visibility.
User Portal: Administrators and developers typically access InsightHub tools (K8s Dashboard, HelloScope) via the k8or Portal (C8) or direct URLs.
4. Benefits & Impact
Holistic Visibility
InsightHub consolidates cluster performance data (Kubernetes Dashboard) and system metrics (ClusterWatch) into intuitive HelloScope dashboards, giving operators a single pane of glass for troubleshooting and capacity planning.
Real-Time Alerting
With ClusterWatch alerting rules, teams receive immediate notifications of critical performance or resource issues, enhancing operational responsiveness.
Customizable Dashboards
HelloScope’s flexible UI allows creation of specialized views for different roles—developers can track application-level metrics, while SREs can focus on node-level health.
Streamlined Troubleshooting
Having a single meta-component for metrics, visualization, and real-time cluster information reduces the time to diagnose issues, as teams can quickly pivot from high-level metrics to specific pod logs within the same ecosystem.
Scalability & Historical Analysis
ClusterWatch and HelloScope together enable storing historical data, supporting trend analysis and forecasting (e.g., future resource demands).
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