KubeDB

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Visualize Memcached Metrics with Grafana Dashboard

KubeDB exposes Memcached metrics through a sidecar exporter. Once Prometheus scrapes those metrics, you can visualize them in Grafana using pre-built KubeDB dashboards. This tutorial walks through the full setup: deploying the monitoring stack, enabling monitoring on a Memcached instance, and importing the Grafana dashboards.

Before You Begin

  • You need a Kubernetes cluster with kubectl configured. If you do not already have a cluster, you can create one by using kind.

  • KubeDB must be installed in your cluster with kubedb-metrics enabled. Follow the setup guide here and make sure to include the flag below during installation:

    --set kubedb-metrics.enabled=true

    kubedb-metrics creates MetricsConfiguration objects for each database type, which Panopticon (Step 2) uses to expose metrics to Prometheus.

  • To keep monitoring resources isolated, we use a separate monitoring namespace and deploy the database in the demo namespace.

    $ kubectl create ns monitoring
namespace/monitoring created

$ kubectl create ns demo
namespace/demo created

Note: YAML files used in this tutorial are stored in docs/examples/memcached/monitoring folder in GitHub repository kubedb/docs.

Configuration

These two steps — deploying kube-prometheus-stack and installing Panopticon — are shared prerequisites for all KubeDB database monitoring guides. If you have already completed them in another guide, skip to Step 1.

Step 1: Deploy kube-prometheus-stack

kube-prometheus-stack installs Prometheus, Prometheus Operator, Alertmanager, and Grafana together. This is the recommended way to get the full monitoring stack on Kubernetes.

Add the prometheus-community Helm repo and install:

$ helm repo add prometheus-community https://prometheus-community.github.io/helm-charts
$ helm repo update

$ helm upgrade --install prometheus prometheus-community/kube-prometheus-stack \
  --namespace monitoring \
  --set grafana.image.tag=7.5.5

Wait for all pods to be ready:

$ kubectl get pods -n monitoring
NAME                                                   READY   STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE
alertmanager-prometheus-kube-prometheus-alertmanager-0 2/2     Running   0          2m
prometheus-grafana-xxxx                                3/3     Running   0          2m
prometheus-kube-prometheus-operator-xxxx               1/1     Running   0          2m
prometheus-kube-prometheus-prometheus-0                2/2     Running   0          2m
prometheus-kube-state-metrics-xxxx                     1/1     Running   0          2m

Find the serviceMonitorSelector label that Prometheus uses to pick up ServiceMonitor objects. You will need this label when enabling monitoring on the Memcached instance.

$ kubectl get prometheus -n monitoring -o jsonpath='{.items[0].spec.serviceMonitorSelector}'
{"matchLabels":{"release":"prometheus"}}

The label is release: prometheus.

Step 2: Install Panopticon

Panopticon is the Appscode operator that reads MetricsConfiguration objects created by kubedb-metrics and exposes them to Prometheus. It must be installed before enabling kubedb-metrics.

$ helm repo add appscode https://charts.appscode.com/stable/
$ helm repo update

$ helm upgrade --install panopticon appscode/panopticon \
  --version v2026.4.30 \
  --namespace kubeops --create-namespace \
  --set monitoring.enabled=true \
  --set monitoring.agent=prometheus.io/operator \
  --set monitoring.serviceMonitor.labels.release=prometheus \
  --set-file license=/path/to/kubedb-license.txt \
  --wait --timeout 5m0s

Verify panopticon is running:

$ kubectl get pods -n kubeops
NAME                          READY   STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE
panopticon-xxxx               1/1     Running   0          1m

Setup

Step 1: Deploy Memcached with Monitoring Enabled

Below is the Memcached object with monitoring configured to use Prometheus Operator.

apiVersion: kubedb.com/v1
kind: Memcached
metadata:
  name: memcached-grafana-demo
  namespace: demo
spec:
  version: "1.6.22"
  replicas: 1
  deletionPolicy: WipeOut
  podTemplate:
    spec:
      containers:
      - name: memcached
        resources:
          limits:
            cpu: 500m
            memory: 128Mi
          requests:
            cpu: 250m
            memory: 64Mi
  monitor:
    agent: prometheus.io/operator
    prometheus:
      serviceMonitor:
        labels:
          release: prometheus
        interval: 10s

Here,

  • monitor.agent: prometheus.io/operator tells KubeDB to create a ServiceMonitor for this instance.
  • monitor.prometheus.serviceMonitor.labels must match the serviceMonitorSelector label of your Prometheus (release: prometheus).
  • monitor.prometheus.serviceMonitor.interval sets the scrape interval to 10 seconds.

Create the Memcached instance:

$ kubectl create -f https://github.com/kubedb/docs/raw/v2026.6.19/docs/examples/memcached/monitoring/memcached-grafana-demo.yaml
memcached.kubedb.com/memcached-grafana-demo created

Wait for it to be Ready:

$ kubectl get memcached -n demo memcached-grafana-demo
NAME                     VERSION   STATUS   AGE
memcached-grafana-demo   1.6.22    Ready    2m

KubeDB creates a stats service named {memcached-name}-stats for the exporter:

$ kubectl get svc -n demo --selector="app.kubernetes.io/instance=memcached-grafana-demo"
NAME                          TYPE        CLUSTER-IP    EXTERNAL-IP   PORT(S)     AGE
memcached-grafana-demo        ClusterIP   10.96.10.1    <none>        11211/TCP   2m
memcached-grafana-demo-stats  ClusterIP   10.96.10.2    <none>        56790/TCP   2m

KubeDB also creates a ServiceMonitor in the demo namespace:

$ kubectl get servicemonitor -n demo
NAME                          AGE
memcached-grafana-demo-stats  2m

Verify it carries the correct label:

$ kubectl get servicemonitor -n demo memcached-grafana-demo-stats -o jsonpath='{.metadata.labels}'
{"release":"prometheus", ...}

Step 2: Verify Prometheus is Scraping

Port-forward the Prometheus pod:

$ kubectl port-forward -n monitoring \
  prometheus-prometheus-kube-prometheus-prometheus-0 9090
Forwarding from 127.0.0.1:9090 -> 9090
Forwarding from [::1]:9090 -> 9090

Open http://localhost:9090/targets in your browser. Look for an entry whose service label matches memcached-grafana-demo-stats. Its state should be UP.

Prometheus Target

If the target is missing, check that the ServiceMonitor label (release: prometheus) matches the Prometheus serviceMonitorSelector.

Step 3: Access Grafana

Port-forward the Grafana service:

$ kubectl port-forward -n monitoring svc/prometheus-grafana 3000:80
Forwarding from 127.0.0.1:3000 -> 80

Open http://localhost:3000. The username is admin. Retrieve the auto-generated password from the secret:

$ kubectl get secret -n monitoring prometheus-grafana \
  -o jsonpath='{.data.admin-password}' | base64 -d
FieldValue
Usernameadmin
Passwordoutput of the command above

Grafana Login

After a successful login you will see the Grafana home page:

Grafana Home

Step 4: Configure Prometheus as a Data Source

If you installed Grafana via kube-prometheus-stack, Prometheus is already configured as the default data source — skip to Step 5.

For a standalone Grafana installation:

  1. Go to Connections → Data sources → Add new data source.

  2. Select Prometheus.

  3. Set the URL to your Prometheus service:

    http://prometheus-operated.monitoring.svc:9090

  4. Click Save & test. You should see Data source is working.

Step 5: Import KubeDB Memcached Dashboards

The KubeDB Memcached dashboards are distributed as JSON files. Each JSON file is a complete dashboard definition — panels, queries, variables, and layout — that Grafana loads in one shot. Without importing, you would have to build every panel and write every PromQL query by hand. Importing lets you skip that entirely.

Three dashboards are available. Download the JSON files from the appscode/grafana-dashboards repository (memcached/ folder):

FileDashboard
memcached_summary_dashboard.jsonKubeDB / Memcached / Summary
memcached_pods_dashboard.jsonKubeDB / Memcached / Pod
memcached_databases_dashboard.jsonKubeDB / Memcached / Database

Import steps (repeat for each file):

  1. In Grafana, click Dashboards in the left sidebar.
  2. Select Import from the menu.
  3. Click Upload dashboard JSON file and select one of the downloaded .json files.
  4. In the Prometheus dropdown that appears, select your Prometheus data source.
  5. Click Import.

The import page looks like this:

Grafana Import Dashboard

After importing the files, they will appear under Dashboards in the left sidebar.

Step 6: Explore the Dashboards

After opening a dashboard, use the dropdown filters at the top to focus on a specific instance.

VariableApplies toWhat to select
namespaceSummary dashboardNamespace where your Memcached is deployed (e.g., demo)
memcachedSummary dashboardName of your instance (e.g., memcached-grafana-demo)
podPod dashboardA specific pod, e.g. memcached-grafana-demo-0
jobDatabase dashboardThe stats job for your instance, e.g. memcached-grafana-demo-stats

KubeDB / Memcached / Summary — instance-level overview:

  • General Info — database status, version, whether secure transport is required, deletion policy, total nodes
  • Resource Requests / Limits — configured CPU, memory, and storage requests and limits
  • CPU Info / CPU Quota — CPU usage over time and per-pod quota utilization (usage vs. requests/limits)

KubeDB Memcached Summary Dashboard

KubeDB / Memcached / Pod — per-pod drill-down:

  • % Hit Ratio / % Get Ratio — cache effectiveness for this pod
  • Commands — rate of cas, decr, delete, flush, get, incr, set, touch operations
  • Connections — active client connections on this pod
  • Storage — memory used vs. free
  • Items — number of items stored, used vs. free capacity
  • Evictions / Reclaimed — items evicted due to memory pressure vs. reclaimed from expired entries
  • Network — read and write throughput

KubeDB Memcached Pod Dashboard

KubeDB / Memcached / Database — instance health and throughput:

  • Instance State — whether the instance is UP or DOWN
  • Up Time — how long the instance has been running
  • Connections — current active connections
  • QPS — queries per second
  • Memory Usage Ratio — memory used as a percentage of the configured limit
  • Items — number of items currently stored
  • QPS / Connections / Read-Write — the same metrics plotted over time for trend analysis

KubeDB Memcached Database Dashboard

Cleaning up

# Remove the Memcached instance
kubectl delete memcached -n demo memcached-grafana-demo

# Remove namespaces
kubectl delete ns demo

# Uninstall monitoring stack (optional)
helm uninstall prometheus -n monitoring
helm uninstall panopticon -n kubeops
kubectl delete ns monitoring kubeops

Next Steps

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