Install

Prerequisites

• A Kubernetes cluster (from any Kubernetes distribution, such as EKS, AKS, minikube, kind, and so on)
• 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 (firewall rules, proxies, and so on)

Install the StormForge Agent

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

   • If you haven’t previously installed the Agent on another cluster, you’ll land on the Get Started page.
   • If you previously installed the Agent on another cluster, you’ll land on the Overview page. Click Clusters in the left navigation to go to the Add Cluster page.
     Or, use the helm install command in step 4 below with your existing credentials file.

2. Enter your Kubernetes cluster name and click Continue.

3. Download or copy the generated Helm values file, which contains your StormForge access credentials and cluster name.

4. Install the Agent: Copy and run the generated helm install command, which looks something like this, populated with your credentials file name:

   helm install stormforge-agent oci://registry.stormforge.io/library/stormforge-agent \ 
     --namespace stormforge-system \ 
     --create-namespace \
     --values CREDENTIAL_FILE
   

   After installing, you should see this line in the output: StormForge Optimize Live has been installed!

   If the Agent didn’t install, see the Installation section in the Troubleshooting topic.

Validate the installation

1. In the left navigation of the StormForge UI, click Overview. Make sure you see a “Welcome to Optimize Live!” message.
   After 10 minutes, the Welcome message is replaced with the information collected so far about your estate.

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

   If your cluster doesn’t have any application-specific workloads, you can install the Optimize Live sample application, which installs via a Helm chart and adds one load-generating workload to your cluster.

What happens after you install?

First 7 days: metrics collection and preliminary recommendations

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

One hour later, after some initial metrics are collected, Optimize Live begins generating preliminary recommendations to give you an evolving preview of potential optimization impact. They’re generated:

• Hourly, for the first 24 hours after installing the Agent
• Once daily, on days 2 to 7 after installing the Agent

It typically takes about 7 days to collect enough metrics to generate complete recommendations that you can 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 further down 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 are not applied automatically, giving you control over how they’re applied. When you’re satisfied that the recommendations are safe to apply, consider how you want to 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.

Install the Applier

First, make sure that the Agent is installed:

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

Then, install the Applier:

• If you cannot 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

Additional Applier installation options

Next steps

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

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

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 a best practice to change them at the cluster level, and then define exceptions at the namespace and workload levels. See the Configure by using annotations guide 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