Installation & updating

Get up and running in minutes

Before installing groundcover, please make sure your cluster meets the requirements.

Sign up to groundcover

The first thing you need to do to start using groundcover is sign up using your email address (no credit card required for the free tier account). Signing up is only possible using a computer and will not be possible using a mobile phone or tablet. It is highly recommended you use your corporate email address, as it will make it easier to use other features such as inviting your colleagues to your workspace. However, signing up using Gmail, Outlook or any other public domains is also possible.

After signing up, you can install groundcover using any one of these methods:

Install using our UI

Install using a CLI

Install using Helm

Use Argo CD to deploy

Installing using our UI

When signing in to groundcover for the first time, the platform automatically detects your organization based on the domain you used to sign in. If your organization already has existing workspaces available, the workspace selection screen will be displayed, where you can choose which of the existing workspaces you would like to join, or if you want to create a new workspace.

Available workspaces will be displayed only if either of the following applies:

• You have been invited to join existing workspaces and haven't joined them yet

• Someone has previously created a workspace that has auto-join enabled for the email domain that you used to sign in (applicable for corporate email domains only)

To join an existing workspace:

1. Click the Join button next to the desired workspace

2. You will be added as a user to that workspace with the user privileges that were assigned by default or those that were assigned to you specifically when the invite was sent.

3. You will automatically be redirected to that workspace.

To create a new workspace:

1. Click the Create a new workspace button

2. Specify a workspace name

3. Choose whether to enable auto-join (those settings can be changed later)

4. Click continue

1. Copy the command line displayed on the screen using the Copy Command button (Note: This is not your API key)

2. Open your CLI

3. Paste the command line in your CLI (Note: Make sure your kubectl context is pointing to the desired cluster)

Coverage policy covers all nodes excluding control plane and fargate. See details here.

1. The installation screen will open automatically and will let you know on-screen when the installation has completed.

Within 10 minutes after installation completes, all of your cluster's data will appear in your workspace.

Enabling Auto-join for a new or existing Workspace

Workspace owners and admins can allow teammates that log in with the same email domain as them to join the Workspace they created automatically, without an admin approval. This capability is called "Auto-join". It is disabled by default, but can be switched on during the workspace set up process, or any time in the workspace settings.

If you logged in with a public email domain (Gmail, Yahoo, Proton, etc.) and are creating a new Workspace, you will not be able to switch on Auto-join for that Workspace.

Installing using a CLI

Use groundcover CLI to automate the installation process. The main advantages of using this installation method are:

• Auto-detection of cluster incompatibility issues

• Tolerations setup automation

• Tuning of resources according to cluster size

• It supports passing helm overrides

• Automated detection of new versions and upgrades suggestions

Read more here.

Coverage policy covers all nodes excluding control plane and fargate. See details here.

Installing groundcover CLI

Linux

sh -c "$(curl -fsSL https://groundcover.com/install.sh)"# Install the groundcover CLI for Linux/MacOS

Windows

SET CLI_VERSION=0.22.3
SET ARCH=amd64 # [amd64,arm64]
curl -sSL https://github.com/groundcover-com/cli/releases/download/v%CLI_VERSION%/groundcover_%CLI_VERSION%_windows_%ARCH%.tar.gz -o groundcover.tar.gz
tar -xvf groundcover.tar.gz -C C:\Windows

Deploying groundcover using the CLI

# Login to your groundcover account
groundcover auth login

# deploy groundcover
groundcover deploy

Installing using Helm

groundcover can be installed using the official helm chart.

If you’re interested in installing the helm chart using a CI/CD solution, such as ArgoCD, make sure you read our CI/CD installation section as well.

Coverage policy covers all nodes excluding control plane and fargate. See details here.

# Make sure you have groundcover CLI installed

# (1) Login to your groundcover account
groundcover auth login

# (2) Fetch your api key
groundcover auth print-api-key

# (3) Make sure groundcover Helm repoistory is present (once)
helm repo add groundcover https://helm.groundcover.com

# (4) Update groundcover Helm repository to fetch latest charts
helm repo update groundcover

# (5) Deploy groundcover release
helm upgrade \
    groundcover \
    groundcover/groundcover \
    -i \
    --create-namespace \
    -n groundcover \
    --set global.groundcover_token={api-key from step (2)},clusterId={a cluster name}

What can you do next?

• Set up your first alert

• Set up your first dashboard

• Invite your colleagues

• Installing groundcover on additional clusters

Adding more clusters

groundcover can monitor multiple clusters, and new clusters can be added at any given time. You can add new clusters using the UI.

Click on the cluster picker in the top right corner and then on the + Add Cluster option.

Note: Our free plan limits the use of groundcover on only one cluster. Check out our Team and Enterprise plans to install on an unlimited number of clusters.

Updating groundcover

To update the groundcover agent to the latest version, run:

Using CLI

# List deployment options
groundcover deploy --help

# if you have helm overrides file, you can pass it using `-f <overrides>.yaml`
groundcover deploy

Using Helm

# (1) Fetch groundcover api-key
groundcover auth print-api-key

# (2) Add groundcover Helm repoistory (once)
helm repo add groundcover https://helm.groundcover.com

# (3) Update groundcover Helm repository to fetch latest charts
helm repo update groundcover

# (4) Deploy groundcover release
helm upgrade \
    groundcover \
    groundcover/groundcover \
    -i \
    --create-namespace \
    -n groundcover \
    --set global.groundcover_token=<api-key from step (1)>,clusterId=my_cluster

Uninstalling

Using CLI

groundcover delete

Using Helm

helm uninstall groundcover -n groundcover

# delete the namespace in order to remove the PVCs as well
kubectl delete ns groundcover