The latest articles on DEV Community by dinesh kumar (@dinesh_kumar_302). https://dev.to/dinesh_kumar_302 https://media2.dev.to/dynamic/image/width=90,height=90,fit=cover,gravity=auto,format=auto/https:%2F%2Fdev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fuploads%2Fuser%2Fprofile_image%2F3347825%2Ff0d98778-c120-4051-87f5-b4a07b5853d0.jpg https://dev.to/dinesh_kumar_302 en dinesh kumar Thu, 08 Jan 2026 09:58:47 +0000 https://dev.to/dinesh_kumar_302/how-to-monitor-amazon-eks-using-prometheus-and-grafana-without-helm-10fb https://dev.to/dinesh_kumar_302/how-to-monitor-amazon-eks-using-prometheus-and-grafana-without-helm-10fb <p>Monitoring Amazon EKS with Prometheus and Grafana (Without Helm)<br> Monitoring is an important part of DevOps and DevSecOps. In this post, I’ll share a simple way to monitor an Amazon EKS cluster using Prometheus and Grafana without using Helm.</p> <p>This guide is based on my hands-on learning while working with Kubernetes.</p> <p><strong>Why Monitoring Is Important</strong></p> <ul> <li>Monitoring helps us:</li> <li>Check cluster health</li> <li>Monitor node and pod resource usage</li> <li>Find issues early</li> <li>Improve system stability and security</li> </ul> <p><strong>Tools Used</strong></p> <ul> <li>Amazon EKS</li> <li>Prometheus</li> <li>Grafana</li> <li>kube-state-metrics</li> <li>node-exporter Helm is not used in this setup.</li> </ul> <p><strong>Simple Architecture</strong></p> <ul> <li>Prometheus collects metrics from the EKS cluster</li> <li>Node Exporter collects node metrics</li> <li>kube-state-metrics provides Kubernetes object data</li> <li>Grafana displays metrics in dashboards</li> </ul> <p><a href="https://media2.dev.to/dynamic/image/width=800%2Cheight=%2Cfit=scale-down%2Cgravity=auto%2Cformat=auto/https%3A%2F%2Fdev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fuploads%2Farticles%2F62jzymb7wsm3o8b2kejc.jpg" class="article-body-image-wrapper"><img src="https://media2.dev.to/dynamic/image/width=800%2Cheight=%2Cfit=scale-down%2Cgravity=auto%2Cformat=auto/https%3A%2F%2Fdev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fuploads%2Farticles%2F62jzymb7wsm3o8b2kejc.jpg" alt=" " width="800" height="477"></a></p> <p><strong>Step 1: Create Monitoring Namespace</strong><br> <em>kubectl create namespace monitoring</em></p> <p><strong>Step 2: Deploy kube-state-metrics</strong><br> This component gives details about:</p> <ul> <li>Pods</li> <li>Namespaces</li> <li>Nodes</li> <li>Deployments After deployment, verify: <em>kubectl get pods -n monitoring</em> </li> </ul> <p><strong>Step 3: Deploy Node Exporter</strong><br> Node Exporter runs on each worker node and collects:</p> <ul> <li>CPU</li> <li>Memory</li> <li>Disk metrics</li> </ul> <p>Check status:<br> <em>kubectl get pods -n monitoring -o wide</em></p> <p><strong>Step 4: Configure Prometheus</strong></p> <ul> <li>Update Prometheus to scrape:</li> <li>Kubernetes nodes</li> <li>Pods</li> <li>kube-state-metrics</li> <li><p>kubelet metrics<br> Add labels:</p></li> <li><p>cluster</p></li> <li><p>node</p></li> <li><p>namespace</p></li> <li><p>pod</p></li> </ul> <p>These labels help filtering in Grafana.</p> <p><strong>Step 5: Connect Grafana to Prometheus</strong></p> <ul> <li>Open Grafana</li> <li>Add Prometheus as a data source</li> <li>Save and test</li> </ul> <p><strong>Step 6: Import Dashboards</strong></p> <ul> <li>Import Kubernetes dashboards to view:</li> <li>Cluster metrics</li> <li>Node usage</li> <li>Pod usage</li> </ul> <p>You can filter by:</p> <ul> <li>Cluster</li> <li>Node</li> <li>Namespace</li> <li>Pod</li> </ul> <p><strong>What You Can Monitor:</strong></p> <ul> <li>Cluster health</li> <li>Node CPU and memory</li> <li>Pod resource usage</li> <li>Pod restarts</li> </ul> <p><strong>What I Learned:</strong></p> <ul> <li>Monitoring is essential for Kubernetes</li> <li>Prometheus and Grafana work well without Helm</li> <li>Labels are very useful for filtering metrics</li> <li>Good monitoring supports DevSecOps practices</li> </ul> <p><strong>Conclusion:</strong><br> This is a simple and effective way to monitor Amazon EKS without Helm.<br> It’s a great starting point for anyone learning Kubernetes monitoring.<br> Thanks for reading! </p> devops eks aws kubernetes