Monitoring DigitalOcean Kubernetes with Linkerd 2

DigitalOcean Kubernetes (DOKS) is a managed Kubernetes service that lets you deploy Kubernetes clusters without the complexities of handling the control plane and containerized infrastructure. Clusters are compatible with standard Kubernetes toolchains and integrate natively with DigitalOcean Load Balancers and block storage volumes.

Linkerd 2 is a third-party tool for monitoring Kubernetes. It is implemented as a service mesh, a collection of lightweight network proxies that sit external to your application code. Linkerd 2 complements DigitalOcean advanced Kubernetes monitoring by providing service-level observability.

The Linkerd installation documentation has detailed setup instructions, including dependency verification. Once installed, the Linkerd dashboard displays first-line metrics, including:

• Success rate
• Request throughput
• 50th, 95th and 99th percentile response latency

Linkerd surfaces top request path metrics as well, with the option to dive into metrics for a single pod or deployment.

Linkerd includes Grafana to visualize the metrics it collects, and it provides several dashboards out of the box.

By default, Linkerd instruments its own service, but also comes with an optional demo application, emojivoto, to try it out before you instrument your applications.