KubeDB

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Visualize Solr Metrics with Grafana Dashboard

KubeDB exposes Solr metrics through the built-in Prometheus exporter module. 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 Solr 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.

  • Solr requires a ZooKeeper cluster for coordination. Deploy a ZooKeeper instance in the demo namespace before creating the Solr instance. See the ZooKeeper quickstart for details.

  • 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/solr/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 Solr 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 Solr with Monitoring Enabled

Below is the Solr object with monitoring configured to use Prometheus Operator. The prometheus-exporter module must be listed in solrModules to enable the metrics endpoint.

apiVersion: kubedb.com/v1alpha2
kind: Solr
metadata:
  name: solr-grafana-demo
  namespace: demo
spec:
  version: "9.8.0"
  replicas: 1
  solrModules:
    - prometheus-exporter
  zookeeperRef:
    name: zk-grafana-demo
    namespace: demo
  storage:
    storageClassName: "standard"
    accessModes:
      - ReadWriteOnce
    resources:
      requests:
        storage: 1Gi
  deletionPolicy: WipeOut
  monitor:
    agent: prometheus.io/operator
    prometheus:
      serviceMonitor:
        labels:
          release: prometheus
        interval: 10s

Here,

  • solrModules: [prometheus-exporter] enables Solr’s built-in Prometheus metrics module.
  • 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).

Create the Solr instance:

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

Wait for it to be Ready:

$ kubectl get solr -n demo solr-grafana-demo
NAME                VERSION   STATUS   AGE
solr-grafana-demo   9.8.0     Ready    3m

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

$ kubectl get svc -n demo --selector="app.kubernetes.io/instance=solr-grafana-demo"
NAME                     TYPE        CLUSTER-IP    EXTERNAL-IP   PORT(S)    AGE
solr-grafana-demo        ClusterIP   10.96.10.1    <none>        8983/TCP   3m
solr-grafana-demo-stats  ClusterIP   10.96.10.2    <none>        9854/TCP   3m

KubeDB also creates a ServiceMonitor in the demo namespace:

$ kubectl get servicemonitor -n demo
NAME                     AGE
solr-grafana-demo-stats  3m

Verify it carries the correct label:

$ kubectl get servicemonitor -n demo solr-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 solr-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 Solr Dashboards

The KubeDB Solr 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 all three JSON files from the appscode/grafana-dashboards repository (solr/ folder):

FileDashboard
solr_summary_dashboard.jsonKubeDB / Solr / Summary
solr_pods_dashboard.jsonKubeDB / Solr / Pod
solr_databases_dashboard.jsonKubeDB / Solr / Database

Import steps (repeat for each of the three files):

  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 all three 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
namespaceAll dashboardsNamespace where your Solr is deployed (e.g., demo)
appAll dashboardsName of your instance (e.g., solr-grafana-demo)
podPod dashboardA specific pod, or All for an aggregated view

KubeDB / Solr / Summary — cluster-level overview:

  • Database Status — current health of the Solr cluster
  • Version — Solr version running
  • Queries per Second — total query throughput across the cluster
  • Update Rate — documents added and deleted per second
  • Cache Hit Rates — query result cache and filter cache effectiveness
  • CPU / Memory — resource usage over time

KubeDB Solr Summary Dashboard

KubeDB / Solr / Pod — per-node drill-down:

  • Uptime — how long this Solr node has been running
  • JVM Heap — heap used vs. max on this node
  • GC Activity — garbage collection pause frequency and duration
  • Requests on Pod — queries and updates handled by this node
  • CPU / Memory — per-pod resource usage

KubeDB Solr Pod Dashboard

KubeDB / Solr / Database — collection-level metrics:

  • Document Count — total documents per collection
  • Index Size — disk space used by each collection’s index
  • Shard Distribution — documents and replicas across shards
  • Merge Activity — index segment merges in progress

KubeDB Solr Database Dashboard

Cleaning up

# Remove the Solr instance
kubectl delete solr -n demo solr-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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