Kubernetes Monitoring

How Kubernetes Auto-Discovery Works

The StatusDude agent runs as a lightweight pod in your Kubernetes cluster. It uses the Kubernetes API to watch for changes to Ingress, Service, and HTTPRoute resources. When a new resource appears, the agent automatically creates a corresponding monitor in StatusDude.

The agent uses a reconcile API for declarative management. On each sync cycle, it sends the desired state (all discovered services) to the StatusDude backend. The backend compares this with the current state and performs the necessary CRUD operations: creating new monitors, updating changed ones, and removing monitors for deleted services.

Each monitor created by the agent is tagged with a stable external ID (e.g., k8s:namespace/name) and marked as agent-managed. This prevents conflicts with manually created monitors and ensures clean ownership boundaries.

Supported Kubernetes Resources

The agent watches multiple Kubernetes resource types to build a comprehensive picture of your services:

• Ingress resources — extracts hosts and paths, creates HTTP monitors for each rule
• Services (LoadBalancer, NodePort) — monitors external-facing services directly
• HTTPRoute (Gateway API) — supports the new Kubernetes Gateway API for HTTP routing
• Custom annotations — control monitoring behavior per resource (interval, regions, alerts)

Agent Deployment

The StatusDude agent is distributed as a Docker image and can be deployed in your cluster via Helm chart, raw manifests, or any Kubernetes deployment tool. It requires a single API key for authentication.

The agent is lightweight and runs as a single pod. It uses minimal resources — typically under 50MB of memory and negligible CPU. It communicates outbound to the StatusDude API over HTTPS, so no inbound firewall rules or load balancer configuration is required.

• Single pod deployment — minimal resource footprint
• Outbound HTTPS only — no inbound ports needed
• Single API key authentication
• Supports RBAC with minimal required permissions
• Configurable sync interval and batch sizes

Beyond Auto-Discovery

The Kubernetes agent doesn't just discover services — it also executes health checks from inside your cluster. This is critical for monitoring internal services that aren't exposed to the internet. The agent can check ClusterIP services, internal APIs, and databases that are only reachable from within the cluster network.

Combined with StatusDude's cloud-based multi-region monitoring, you get both internal and external visibility. External monitors verify that your services are reachable from the internet, while the agent verifies they're healthy from inside the cluster.

Getting Started

Kubernetes monitoring uses the StatusDude private agent, which is an organization feature. To get started, create or join an organization in StatusDude, then go to your organization settings and open the Agents tab.

Create a new agent to get an API key, then deploy the agent in your Kubernetes cluster using the Helm chart. Kubernetes auto-discovery is enabled by default — the agent will automatically find and monitor your services as soon as it's running.

• Create or join an organization
• Go to Organization Settings → Agents tab
• Create a new agent and copy the API key
• Auto-discovery is enabled by default — no extra configuration needed
• The agent discovers Ingresses, Services, and HTTPRoutes automatically
• Deploy with Helm:

helm install statusdude-agent oci://docker.io/statusdude/statusdude-agent --set apiKey=your_key