Install

Prerequisites

• A Kubernetes cluster (from any Kubernetes distribution, such as EKS, AKS, minikube, or kind)
• A StormForge account: Sign up for free at app.stormforge.io/signup.
• In an enterprise environment, make sure a system administrator has addressed additional prerequisites (such as firewall rules and proxies)

Install the StormForge Agent

1. Log in to app.stormforge.io using the email you signed up with.

   If you are setting up StormForge for the first time, continue to step 3. You will be automatically taken to the Add Cluster page.

2. Click Clusters in the left navigation; then, on the Clusters page, click Add Cluster.

3. Provide a name for your cluster and click Continue. The cluster name can’t exceed 63 characters, can’t start or end with a dash (-), and must follow the RFC 1123 DNS label standard.

4. Install the Agent: Copy and run the generated helm install command, which looks similar to the following command (where my-cluster is the Kubernetes cluster name you provided, and CLIENT_ID and CLIENT_SECRET are generated alphanumeric strings):

   helm install stormforge-agent oci://registry.stormforge.io/library/stormforge-agent \
     --create-namespace --namespace stormforge-system \
     --set clusterName="my-cluster" \
     --set authorization.clientID="CLIENT_ID" \
     --set authorization.clientSecret="CLIENT_SECRET"
   

Validate the installation

1. Go back to the Get Started page and click Check Connection. You’ll be redirected to the Overview page where you can see a Welcome message and confirmation that the Agent is connected.

2. After about 10 minutes, you can see your cluster and its workloads on the Clusters and Workloads pages.

   In the left navigation, click Workloads and search for your cluster name. Make sure you see the stormforge-agent-workload-controller workload and any workloads that were already on your cluster.

What happens after you install?

Optimize Live starts collecting workload metrics as soon as you install the Agent.

First 7 days: Metrics collection and preliminary recommendations

Ten minutes after installation, once initial metrics are collected, Optimize Live provides its first preliminary recommendation to give you an evolving preview of potential optimization impact. 

Preliminary recommendations are then generated:

• Hourly, for the first 24 hours after installing the Agent

• Once daily, on days 2 to 7 after installing the Agent

  Preliminary recommendations can be viewed, but shouldn’t be applied because they’re not based on a complete set of metrics.

It typically takes about 7 days to collect enough metrics to generate an optimal recommendation (referred to as a complete recommendation) for you to apply.

For this reason, we recommend waiting 7 days before applying recommendations.

After 7 days: View and apply recommendations

Optimize Live has collected sufficient metrics and now generates recommendations once daily for each workload. You can change the schedule at any time.

You can review the projected impact of recommendations in these ways:

• At the estate level on the Overview page.
• At the cluster level on the Clusters page. You can drill down to view namespaces, and then drill down further to view workloads.
• At the workload level on the Workloads page.
  • Click View Summary to get a breakdown of workload statuses (which can help you troubleshoot and view workload health).
  • Click a workload name to view workload details and recommendation impact.

By default, recommendations aren’t applied automatically, giving you control over how they’re applied. When you’re satisfied the recommendations are safe to apply, decide how you’ll apply them.

Applying recommendations: Should you install the StormForge Applier?

Install the StormForge Applier if you plan to:

• Apply recommendations on demand from the StormForge UI.
• Apply them automatically on a schedule. For this method, you must also enable automatic deployment.

You do not need to install the StormForge Applier if you plan to deploy recommendations as part of a GitOps workflow or export recommendations as patches.

Continuous reconciliation and the Applier

You can control whether the Applier continuously reconciles workload resource settings to the recommended values by setting the Applier’s reconciliation.mode when you install the Applier. For details, see Continuous reconciliation in the Applier configuration topic.

Install the Applier

First, make sure that the Agent is installed:

kubectl get pods -A | grep 'stormforge-agent'

Then, install the Applier:

• If you can’t run helm install, go to this section in the Install the StormForge Agent - advanced scenarios topic.

helm install stormforge-applier \
  oci://registry.stormforge.io/library/stormforge-applier \
  -n stormforge-system

To validate the installation, run:

kubectl get pods -A | grep 'stormforge-applier'

The output should look something like this:

stormforge-system    stormforge-applier-8554758f5b-whbc4             1/1     Running   0              20s

For additional Applier configuration options, see the Applier configuration topic.

Next steps

Review the optimization settings
Review the settings Optimize Live uses to generate recommendations for a workload: In the StormForge UI, click Workloads; then click a workload name and go to the Settings tab.

At this point, because you haven’t changed any of these defaults yet, these settings apply to all workloads in the cluster.

Change the optimization settings (optional)
If you installed the Applier and enabled automatic configuration, and you’re satisfied with the current cluster-level defaults, you don’t need to do anything else.

If you decide to change these default values, it’s considered best practice to set them at the cluster level, then define exceptions at the namespace and workload levels. See the topics under Configure optimization settings for details.

Helm charts and troubleshooting

To learn more about the Agent and Applier Helm charts and steps to troubleshoot, you can run the following commands:

helm show readme oci://registry.stormforge.io/library/stormforge-agent

helm show readme oci://registry.stormforge.io/library/stormforge-applier

To learn about other parameters that you can configure, run the following commands:

helm show values oci://registry.stormforge.io/library/stormforge-agent

helm show values oci://registry.stormforge.io/library/stormforge-applier