Feature Request: Add optional Prometheus + Grafana monitoring setup #3046
Description
First off, thanks for maintaining this repo — the Hipster Shop has become one of the most popular ways to learn and explain microservices on Kubernetes. It does a great job of showing how services interact in a realistic environment.
One thing I’ve noticed, though, is that the demo stops at deployment. In practice, running microservices isn’t just about deploying them — it’s also about observing, troubleshooting, and proving that everything is healthy. That’s where monitoring comes in, and I think this repo has a huge opportunity to fill that gap.
My suggestion: add an optional Prometheus + Grafana setup (kept separate so the core demo stays lightweight). This would let users:
See live metrics for the services (latency, errors, throughput).
Use prebuilt Grafana dashboards to visualize traffic and dependencies.
Experiment with alerting and SRE-style monitoring practices.
Connect the dots between “here’s the architecture” and “here’s how it actually behaves under load.”
This wouldn’t just be a nice-to-have — it would turn Hipster Shop into a complete microservices lab: you can deploy, observe, and learn end-to-end.
If you think this aligns with the project goals, I’d be happy to help with the implementation (Prometheus Operator manifests, Grafana dashboards, and docs).