Installation

Installing Kubecost

To get started with Kubecost and OpenCost, visit our Installation page which will take you step by step through getting Kubecost set up.

This installation method is available for free and leverages the Kubecost Helm Chart. It provides access to all OpenCost and Kubecost community functionality and can scale to large clusters. This will also provide a token for trialing and retaining data across different Kubecost product tiers.

Alternative installation methods

1. You can also install directly with the Kubecost Helm Chart with Helm v3.1+ using the following commands. This provides the same functionality as the step above but doesn't generate a product token for managing tiers or upgrade trials.

helm upgrade --install kubecost \
  --repo https://kubecost.github.io/cost-analyzer/ cost-analyzer \
  --namespace kubecost --create-namespace

2. You can run Helm Template against the Kubecost Helm Chart to generate local YAML output. This requires extra effort when compared to directly installing the Helm Chart but is more flexible than deploying a flat manifest.

helm template kubecost \
  --repo https://kubecost.github.io/cost-analyzer/ cost-analyzer \
  --namespace kubecost --create-namespace \
  -f your-custom-values.yaml > kubecost.yaml
kubectl apply -f kubecost.yaml

3. You can install via flat manifest. This install path is not recommended because it has limited flexibility for managing your deployment and future upgrades.

kubectl apply -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/kubecost/cost-analyzer-helm-chart/develop/kubecost.yaml

4. Lastly, you can deploy the open-source OpenCost project directly as a Pod. This install path provides a subset of free functionality and is available through its install guide. Specifically, this install path deploys the underlying cost allocation model without the same UI or access to enterprise functionality: cloud provider billing integration, RBAC/SAML support, and scale improvements in Kubecost.

Configuring Kubecost at install

Kubecost has a number of product configuration options that you can specify at install time in order to minimize the number of settings changes required within the product UI. This makes it simple to redeploy Kubecost. These values can be configured under kubecostProductConfigs in our values.yaml. These parameters are passed to a ConfigMap that Kubecost detects and writes to its /var/configs.

Troubleshooting installation

If you encounter any errors while installing Kubecost, first visit our Troubleshoot Install doc. If the error you are experiencing is not already documented here, or a solution is not found, contact our Support team at [e-mail] for more help.

Updating Kubecost

Kubecost releases are scheduled on a near-monthly basis. You can keep up to date with new Kubecost updates and patches by following our release notes here.

After installing Kubecost, you will be able to update Kubecost with the following command, which will upgrade you to the most recent version:

helm repo update && helm upgrade kubecost kubecost/cost-analyzer -n kubecost

You can upgrade or downgrade to a specific version of Kubecost with the following command:

helm upgrade kubecost --repo... --version 1.XXX.X

Deleting Kubecost

To uninstall Kubecost and its dependencies, run the following command:

helm uninstall kubecost -n kubecost

Next steps

After successfully installing Kubecost, first time users should review our First Time User Guide to start immediately seeing the benefits of the product while also ensuring their workspace is properly set up.