NetApp Monitoring

Learn more about the netapp-monitoring plugin. Use it to deploy Harvest for monitoring NetApp storage filers via Prometheus metrics.

Overview

This plugin deploys a monitoring stack for NetApp storage systems using NetApp Harvest. Harvest collects performance, capacity, and health metrics from ONTAP systems and exposes them via a Prometheus exporter.

The chart includes a service discovery component (netappsd) that automatically discovers NetApp filers from Netbox and spawns Harvest instances to collect metrics.

Architecture

Components included in this plugin:

Harvest — Collects metrics from NetApp ONTAP systems using REST/ZAPI collectors and exports them in Prometheus format.
NetApp SD (Service Discovery) — Discovers filers from Netbox and manages Harvest worker instances dynamically.
- Master — Queries Netbox for filer inventory and coordinates workers.
- Worker — Runs Harvest instances for discovered filers and exposes metrics.

Quick Start

Prerequisites

A running and Greenhouse-onboarded Kubernetes cluster.
NetApp ONTAP filer credentials.
Netbox API access with a valid token.

Step 1:

Install the netapp-monitoring plugin via the Greenhouse dashboard or by creating a Plugin resource in your Greenhouse central cluster.

Step 2:

Configure the required options:

Parameter	Description	Required
`harvest.image.repository`	Harvest container image repository	Yes
`harvest.image.tag`	Harvest container image tag	Yes
`netappsd.enabled`	Enable NetApp service discovery	Yes
`netappsd.image.repository`	NetApp SD container image repository	Yes
`netappsd.image.tag`	NetApp SD container image tag	Yes
`netappsd.region`	Region for service discovery	Yes
`netappsd.lob`	Line of business label applied to discovered filer metrics	Yes
`netappsd.credentials_file`	Mount path for the Harvest credentials file inside the poller container	Yes
`netappsd.credentials_secret`	Name of the generated credentials secret (for example `local-basic-auth`)	Yes
`netappsd.netapp_exporter_user`	NetApp exporter username	Yes
`netappsd.netapp_exporter_password`	NetApp exporter password	Yes
`netappsd.netbox_api_token`	Netbox API token	Yes
`netappsd.netbox_host`	Netbox host URL	Yes
`apps`	Map of app labels to enable discovery (for example cinder/manila/apod/cinder-manila)	No

Configuration

netappsd Controller Behavior and RBAC

The netappsd master component acts as a controller for discovered filers.

It monitors filer inventory from Netbox and reconciles the desired worker state.
It scales worker Deployments up and down based on filers discovered for each configured app label.
It patches Pod metadata to update the filer label, which is used to associate running workers with the discovered filer identity.

For this reason, the chart grants the netappsd service account these permissions in its namespace:

get, list, update, patch on Pods
get, list, update, patch on Deployments
get, list on Endpoints

Without patch and update, the master cannot reconcile runtime labels or scaling decisions correctly.

The Deployment selectors and pod labels also stay app-specific on purpose. In harvest-netappsd-master-deployment.yaml and harvest-netappsd-worker-deployment.yaml, the shared helper labels used elsewhere in the chart are the same for every app (cinder, manila, apod, cinder-manila), so using them as the Deployment selector would make all master and worker Deployments select across each other’s pods and break isolation. The name: {{ include "netapp-monitoring.fullname" . }}-{{ $appName }}-master label remains inline because it uniquely identifies pods per app and keeps each Deployment scoped to its own workload.

Harvest

The Harvest component is configured with the following default collectors:

Ems — Event Management System
Rest — REST API metrics
RestPerf — REST performance counters
KeyPerf — Key performance metrics
Unix — Unix host metrics
Simple — Simple counter metrics

Metrics are exposed on port 13000 via the Prometheus exporter.

Service Discovery Apps

The apps section configures which filers are discovered based on their Netbox labels:

apps:
  cinder:
    enabled: true
  manila:
    enabled: true
  apod:
    enabled: true
  cinder-manila:
    enabled: true

Example Plugin Resource

apiVersion: greenhouse.sap/v1alpha1
kind: Plugin
metadata:
  name: netapp-monitoring
spec:
  pluginDefinition: netapp-monitoring
  clusterName: my-cluster
  optionValues:
    - name: harvest.image.repository
      value: keppel.eu-de-1.cloud.sap/ccloud/harvest
    - name: harvest.image.tag
      value: "25.11.0-20251126205434"
    - name: netappsd.enabled
      value: true
    - name: netappsd.image.repository
      value: keppel.eu-de-1.cloud.sap/ccloud/netappsd
    - name: netappsd.image.tag
      value: dme-strg-20260617091551
    - name: netappsd.region
      value: eu-de-1
    - name: netappsd.netapp_exporter_user
      valueFrom:
        secret:
          name: netapp-monitoring-secrets
          key: exporter-user
    - name: netappsd.netapp_exporter_password
      valueFrom:
        secret:
          name: netapp-monitoring-secrets
          key: exporter-password
    - name: netappsd.netbox_api_token
      valueFrom:
        secret:
          name: netapp-monitoring-secrets
          key: netbox-token

Maintainers

Ganesh Kugulakrishnan
Chandrakanth Renduchintala