Are Kube-state-metrics new or well formatted metrics?

Question

I am fairly new to Kubernetes and had a question concerning kube-state-metrics. When I simply monitor Kubernetes using Prometheus I obtain a set of metrics from the cAdvisor, the nodes (node exporter), the pods, etc. When I include the kube-state-metrics, I seem to obtain more "relevant" metrics. Do kube-state-metrics allow to scrape "new" information from Kubernetes or are they rather "formatted" metrics using the initial Kubernetes metrics (from the nodes, etc. I mentioned earlier).

Answer 1

The two are basically unrelated. Cadvisor is giving you low-level stats about the containers like how much RAM and CPU they are using. KSM gives you info from the Kubernetes API like the Pod object status. Both are useful for different things and you probably want both.