Enable observability¶

Two paths: Terraform (recommended) or juju CLI. Both wire the same thing: an OpenTelemetry Collector in the charmarr model, the charmarr-crowsnest-k8s charm, and five integrations into the COS-side offers.

Coverage per charm¶

Not every charm exposes every observability relation. Verified against the published charmcraft.yaml files.

Charm	metrics	dashboard	logs	traces	crowsnest
charmarr-storage	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅
flaresolverr	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅
gluetun	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅
plex	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅
prowlarr	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅
qbittorrent	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅
radarr	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅
sabnzbd	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅
sonarr	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅
seerr	✅	❌	❌	❌	✅
overseerr	❌	❌	❌	❌	❌

Seerr publishes a single metric, charmarr_requests_total{status=...}, which powers the fleet-level request funnel and SLO. It does not bundle a dashboard because seerr itself is already a UI for tracking the same data (pending, approved, processing, available, declined). The fleet view is the right place to look for request signal in Grafana.

Overseerr is deprecated. It carries no observability relations. The migration runbook covers moving to seerr.

Exporters¶

Each metrics-publishing charm runs an exporter as a sidecar in the same pod as the workload. Charmarr deliberately reuses well-maintained community exporters rather than rolling its own, so the underlying images are the standard ones the upstream communities curate.

Charm	Exporter
radarr, sonarr, prowlarr	`thecfu/scraparr`
qbittorrent	`martabal/qbittorrent-exporter`
sabnzbd	`msroest/sabnzbd_exporter`
plex	`axsuul/plex-media-server-exporter`
gluetun	`thecfu/gluetun-exporter`
flaresolverr	none (no upstream exporter exists)
seerr, charmarr-storage, charmarr-crowsnest	none (charm-emitted only)

Charms without a workload exporter still ship topology metrics directly from the charm container, so they still light up the fleet view in crowsnest.

Prerequisites¶

COS offers¶

COS lives in a separate Juju model. Whoever owns the COS deployment must expose five offers:

Offer	Charm	Endpoint
`grafana`	grafana	`grafana-dashboard`, `grafana-source`
`loki-logging`	loki	`logging`
`mimir-receive-remote-write`	mimir	`receive-remote-write`
`send-ca-cert`	grafana	`send-ca-cert`
`tempo-tracing`	tempo	`tracing`

Typical pattern on the COS side:

juju offer grafana:grafana-dashboard,grafana-source -m cos
juju offer loki:logging -m cos
juju offer mimir-receive-remote-write:receive-remote-write -m cos
juju offer send-ca-cert:send-ca-cert -m cos
juju offer tempo:tracing -m cos

Adjust app names to match your COS deployment.

Grafana node-graph plugin¶

The fleet relation graph in crowsnest's dashboard is rendered by the hamedkarbasi93-nodegraphapi-datasource Grafana plugin. The plugin must be installed in the COS Grafana before the fleet dashboard panel will render.

Install it on the COS side with:

juju config grafana datasource_plugins="hamedkarbasi93-nodegraphapi-datasource" -m cos

Grafana will install the plugin and restart automatically.

With Terraform¶

The bundled Terraform modules at terraform/charmarr/ and terraform/charmarr-plus/ take a single cos variable. When set, otelcol and crowsnest get deployed, every fleet relation wires automatically, and crowsnest is exposed through the existing arr-ingress so that COS reaches it via the external URL.

terraform.tfvars

model = "charmarr"
owner = "admin"

# ... usual charmarr config ...

cos = {
  offers = {
    grafana            = "admin/cos.grafana"
    loki_logging       = "admin/cos.loki-logging"
    mimir_remote_write = "admin/cos.mimir-receive-remote-write"
    send_ca_cert       = "admin/cos.send-ca-cert"
    tempo_tracing      = "admin/cos.tempo-tracing"
  }
}

That is the entire observability configuration. terraform apply brings up the plane.

Leave cos = null (the default) and nothing observability-related is deployed.

Why ingress and not cross-model mesh

Grafana lives in the COS model and needs to reach crowsnest to render the fleet's relation graph. Wiring crowsnest into arr-ingress publishes a stable external URL that COS uses directly. No cross-model Istio policies. No mesh trust shenanigans. Cross-model access happens through ingress.

With the Juju CLI¶

For users not on Terraform, the same wiring done by hand. Substitute your COS controller and model names where applicable.

1. Consume the COS offers¶

juju consume admin/cos.grafana -m charmarr
juju consume admin/cos.loki-logging -m charmarr
juju consume admin/cos.mimir-receive-remote-write -m charmarr
juju consume admin/cos.send-ca-cert -m charmarr
juju consume admin/cos.tempo-tracing -m charmarr

If COS lives on a different controller, use the cross-controller form: juju consume <controller>:admin/cos.grafana.

2. Deploy the local plane¶

juju deploy opentelemetry-collector-k8s otelcol --channel 2/edge --trust -m charmarr
juju deploy charmarr-crowsnest-k8s crowsnest --channel latest/edge --trust -m charmarr

3. Wire each charmarr charm to otelcol¶

For every fleet charm that exposes the relevant relation (refer to the coverage table above). Example with radarr:

# Metrics scrape
juju integrate radarr:metrics-endpoint otelcol:metrics-endpoint -m charmarr

# Log forwarding
juju integrate radarr:logging otelcol:receive-loki-logs -m charmarr

# Charm hook traces
juju integrate radarr:charm-tracing otelcol:receive-traces -m charmarr

# Dashboard publishing
juju integrate radarr:grafana-dashboard grafana -m charmarr

Same four lines for sonarr, prowlarr, qbittorrent, sabnzbd, plex, flaresolverr, gluetun, charmarr-storage, and crowsnest. For seerr, only the metrics relation applies:

juju integrate seerr:metrics-endpoint otelcol:metrics-endpoint -m charmarr

4. Wire the fleet relation¶

Crowsnest aggregates each fleet member's topology graph via the crowsnest relation:

for app in radarr sonarr prowlarr qbittorrent sabnzbd plex gluetun flaresolverr seerr charmarr-storage; do
  juju integrate crowsnest:crowsnest $app:crowsnest -m charmarr
done

5. Expose crowsnest via ingress¶

Grafana renders crowsnest's relation graph by fetching from its HTTP endpoint. Cross-model access happens through the existing istio-ingress charm, which avoids needing cross-model mesh policies:

juju integrate crowsnest:istio-ingress-route arr-ingress:istio-ingress-route -m charmarr
juju integrate crowsnest:grafana-source grafana -m charmarr
juju integrate crowsnest:grafana-dashboard grafana -m charmarr

The grafana-source relation publishes the external URL of crowsnest's HTTP endpoint, which Grafana uses as a datasource.

6. Wire otelcol to the COS offers¶

juju integrate otelcol:send-loki-logs loki-logging -m charmarr
juju integrate otelcol:send-remote-write mimir-receive-remote-write -m charmarr
juju integrate otelcol:send-traces tempo-tracing -m charmarr
juju integrate otelcol:receive-ca-cert send-ca-cert -m charmarr

Verify¶

juju status -m charmarr

All units should reach active after a couple of minutes. Open Grafana, look for dashboards tagged charmarr, and the fleet view shows up under "Charmarr Fleet".