Monitor Kubernetes with Zabbix Using Python and Zabbix Sender

Overview

The article explains a step‑by‑step method for monitoring a Kubernetes (K8s) cluster through Zabbix by using a Python script that calls the K8s API with the requests library and sends the results to Zabbix via zabbix_sender.

Step 1 – Obtain the Kubernetes API address

Run the following command on the K8s master node (executing on a worker node may return an outdated address): kubectl cluster-info The command output provides the API server URL, which will be used by the Python script.

Step 2 – Generate a service‑account token on the master

Create a token that the script can use for authentication. Execute on the master host:

kubectl -n kube-system describe secret $(kubectl -n kube-system get secret | grep admin-user | awk '{print $1}')

Save the token value to a local file; later it will be inserted into the Python script.

Step 3 – Deploy the Python monitoring script

Create a directory under Zabbix external scripts, e.g. /usr/local/zabbix/share/zabbix/external_scripts/k8s, and place the get_k8s.py script there.

Modify three placeholders in the script:

Insert the API server URL obtained in Step 1.

Insert the token from Step 2.

Adjust any cluster‑specific parameters (namespace, resource types, etc.).

Step 4 – Create a Zabbix host and link the script

Add a new host in Zabbix with the exact name k8s_master (the host name must match this value, otherwise Zabbix cannot retrieve the data).

Configure an external check item that calls the script, for example:

/usr/local/zabbix/share/zabbix/external_scripts/k8s/get_k8s.py

Step 5 – Manually trigger the check

Select the newly created monitoring item in the Zabbix UI and click “Check now”. The script contacts the K8s API, gathers the desired metrics, and sends them back to Zabbix via zabbix_sender.

Successful execution is shown in Zabbix as the collected data, confirming that the API query worked.

Key Files and Commands

kubectl -n kube-system describe secret …

– retrieve token. get_k8s.py – Python script that uses requests to call the API. zabbix_sender – sends metric data to the Zabbix server.

After completing these steps, Zabbix will continuously monitor the Kubernetes cluster through the custom script.