Autoscale your infrastructure with Kubernetes

Clone our New Relic Pixie lab repo

Clone the following repo from Github:

$
git clone https://github.com/newrelic-experimental/pixie-lab-materials
$
​​cd pixie-lab-materials/main
$
./setup.sh

The setup.sh script spins up a new minikube cluster using the Pixie-supported hyperkit driver. It then configures your network memory and CPU for optimal performance with Pixie and creates all the pods and services that make up the demo application.

In a new terminal window, open a minikube tunnel:

$
minikube tunnel -p minikube-pixie-lab

You should have two terminals:

• Your tunnel, which remains open to access your demo application.
• A place to run commands for the tutorial.

Install the Kubernetes integration with Pixie

Follow our guided install to install the New Relic Kubernetes integration. This connects New Relic to your Kubernetes cluster. Make sure to:

• Check Instant service-level insights, Full-body requests, and Application profiles through Pixie to enable Pixie.

• Keep all other default checked items

  Once you click continue, copy and paste that command into your dev environment.

Install New Relic Metrics Adapter

To install the New Relic Metrics Adapter, use the newrelic-k8s-metrics-adapter Helm chart. If you've used the nri-bundle-chart to deploy any New Relic Kubernetes components, then you have access to this Helm chart.

$
helm upgrade --install newrelic newrelic/nri-bundle \
>
  --namespace newrelic --create-namespace --reuse-values \
>
  --set metrics-adapter.enabled=true \
>
  --set newrelic-k8s-metrics-adapter.personalAPIKey=YOUR_NEW_RELIC_PERSONAL_API_KEY \
>
  --set newrelic-k8s-metrics-adapter.config.accountID=YOUR_NEW_RELIC_ACCOUNT_ID \
>
  --set newrelic-k8s-metrics-adapter.config.externalMetrics.manipulate_average_requests.query="FROM Metric SELECT average(http.server.duration) WHERE instrumentation.provider='pixie'"

Here's what these flags do:

• metrics-adapter.enabled: Sets to true to install the metrics adapter chart
• newrelic-k8s-metrics-adapter.personalAPIKey: Sets your New Relic API key.
• newrelic-k8s-metrics-adapter.accountID: The ID of the account that forwards metrics.
• newrelic-k8s-metrics-adapter.config.externalMetrics.external_metric_name.query: Adds a new external metric with the following information:
  • external_metric_name: The metric name.
  • query: The base NRQL query for the metric.

Confirm your NRQL query is accurate

You should test your query before sending metrics to the autoscaler from New Relic. Go to one.newrelic.com > Query your Data, then copy and paste the following NRQL query:

FROM Metric SELECT average(http.server.duration) WHERE instrumentation.provider='pixie'

Configure your autoscaler

From the pixie-lab-materials/main/kube directory, create a new file called hpa.yml. The New Relic metrics adapter sends data to the controller manager, which is defined by the HPA definition in this YAML file.

kind: HorizontalPodAutoscaler
apiVersion: autoscaling/v2beta2
metadata:
    name: manipulate-scaler
spec:
    scaleTargetRef:
        apiVersion: apps/v1
        kind: Deployment
        name: manipulation-service
    minReplicas: 1
    maxReplicas: 10
    metrics:
        - type: External
            external:
                metric:
                    name: manipulate_average_requests
                target:
                    type: Value
                    value: 100

Apply the new YAML file by running:

$
cd pixie-lab-materials/main/kube
$
kubectl apply -f hpa.yaml