enable stackdriver monitoring agent google container engine clusters on gci image

Question

This describes how one would install the agent on a regular gce instance: https://cloud.google.com/monitoring/agent/install-agent

Previously the cluster ran on debian os nodes and we'd have the agent running to monitor cpu, disk space etc. now it's upgraded to kubernetes 1.4 and running on container-optimized os (https://cloud.google.com/container-optimized-os/docs/) the agent can't be installed manually.

I realise pods are monitored automatically, but that's only part of the picture.

I feel like I'm missing something here as this it'd be a big backward step for this not to be possible.

Answer 1

I've ran into the same thing several times. You have to switch back to the container-vm format in order to install the stackdriver agent.

gcloud container clusters upgrade --image-type=container_vm [CLUSTER_NAME]

That should flip it back. You can install the agent once the images flip. We're running 1.4.7 on the container-vm image and haven't seen any issues. Seems like overhead but not an actual step-back if that helps.