New Relic validates Kubernetes monitoring for VMware VKS clusters
New Relic has validated its Kubernetes monitoring on VMware vSphere Kubernetes Service (VKS) 3.6, allowing mutual customers to monitor VKS infrastructure alongside the applications running on it. The integration supports VKS 3.x and brings Kubernetes, application performance, logs, and traces into New Relic.
- New Relic validated Kubernetes monitoring on VKS 3.6.
- The integration supports VKS 3.x.
- Kubernetes and application data appear side by side in New Relic.
- vCenter data covers hosts, virtual machines, datastores, and clusters.
- A free account includes 100GB of data ingest per month.
Monitoring VKS and the applications it supports
VKS is a component of VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF), giving platform teams CNCF conformant Kubernetes within the same platform used to run virtual machines. According to New Relic, organizations using VKS can run container-based workloads alongside their existing virtual machines and monitor both environments through New Relic.
The integration places cluster, node, pod, and container health alongside application performance data, logs, and traces. This lets teams follow a slow transaction back to the workload and node involved without switching between separate tools.
Validated versions and infrastructure visibility
New Relic validated the integration on VKS 3.6 in a sandbox environment configured with the VMware team. Supported VKS versions are VKS 3.x, with the vSphere Supervisor component supported from 9.0 to 9.1 and the vSphere component supported on 8.x and 9.x.
The New Relic Kubernetes integration is installed with Helm 3 using nri-bundle on a cluster with at least one Linux node. For teams that also need visibility below the Kubernetes layer, New Relic collects certain observability data from vCenter covering hosts, virtual machines, datastores, and clusters.
New Relic says alerts, dashboards, and New Relic AI work with VKS data in the same way as they do across the rest of a monitored technology stack. The company cites its 2026 Observability Forecast, which says high-impact outages cost organizations a mean of $1.85 million per hour.
What teams can do next
Platform engineers, site reliability engineers, and developers can sign up for a free New Relic account, which includes 100GB of data ingest per month, or use an existing account. They then need to check the VKS compatibility and requirements, install the New Relic Kubernetes integration, and open their cluster in New Relic to view its nodes, pods, and workloads.
Ahmar Mohammad, Vice President, Container Platform, Advanced Services, and Partner Ecosystem, VCF Division, Broadcom, said the validation “helps ensure teams have a tested solution for monitoring their Kubernetes workloads from day one.” The announcement gives VKS customers a validated path to monitor Kubernetes workloads and the applications dependent on them within one observability platform.
