Exposing Kubernetes Metrics: Adding Metrics Server to Your Local Cluster

[Lomanu4]

This guide is the second part of the "Build a Kubernetes Lab with Vagrant & Ansible" series. In this article, we’ll add resource usage monitoring to your cluster by installing the Kubernetes Metrics Server.

Table of Contents

• Prerequisites
• Step 1: Install Metrics Server
• Step 2: Patch the Deployment
• Step 3: Verify Installation
• Step 4: Use the Metrics API
• What's Next?
• Useful links

? Prerequisite: Your Local Cluster Must Be Running


This article assumes you have already completed the first part of the series, where we created a local Kubernetes cluster using Vagrant and Ansible. If not, go back and follow

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first.

Reminder: You should have exported your Kubernetes configuration locally with the following command:


vagrant ssh kubmaster -c "sudo cat /etc/kubernetes/admin.conf" > ~/kubeconfig-vagrant.yaml

Set this file as your config path:


export KUBECONFIG=~/kubeconfig-vagrant.yaml
Step 1: Install Metrics Server


We’ll use the official manifest from the Kubernetes SIG repository to install the Metrics Server:


KUBECONFIG=$KUBECONFIG kubectl apply -f

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&> /dev/null

This deploys the metrics-server in the kube-system namespace. However, some environments (like local or self-hosted) require additional flags to work properly.

Step 2: Patch the Deployment


By default, the metrics server may not collect metrics correctly in local environments due to self-signed certificates or insecure Kubelet connections.

To fix that, apply the following patch to the deployment:


KUBECONFIG=$KUBECONFIG kubectl patch deployment metrics-server \
-n kube-system \
--type='json' \
-p='[
{
"op": "add",
"path": "/spec/template/spec/containers/0/command",
"value": [
"/metrics-server",
"--kubelet-insecure-tls",
"--kubelet-preferred-address-types=InternalIP"
]
}
]' &> /dev/null

This tells the metrics server to:

• Ignore TLS errors from kubelet (safe for local)
• Prefer InternalIP when communicating with nodes

Step 3: Verify Installation


Once installed and patched, verify that everything is working:


KUBECONFIG=$KUBECONFIG kubectl get deployment metrics-server -n kube-system

If it shows READY and AVAILABLE, you're good to go!

Step 4: Use the Metrics API


You can now query live resource usage data:

View Node Metrics


KUBECONFIG=$KUBECONFIG kubectl top nodes
View Pod Metrics (All Namespaces)


KUBECONFIG=$KUBECONFIG kubectl top pods -A

You now have visibility into CPU and memory usage across your cluster.

What's Next?


With your metrics server up and running, you're ready to:

• Explore Kubernetes Horizontal Pod Autoscaling (HPA)
• Set up resource dashboards like Lens or K9s
• Monitor cluster health trends locally

In the next part of the series, we’ll configure the NGINX Ingress Controller to manage external traffic to your services.

Resources

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