Resource Management for Pods and Containers
When you specify a Pod, you can optionally specify how much of each resource a container needs. The most common resources to specify are CPU and memory (RAM); there are others.
When you specify the resource request for containers in a Pod, the kube-scheduler uses this information to decide which node to place the Pod on. When you specify a resource limit for a container, the kubelet enforces those limits so that the running container is not allowed to use more of that resource than the limit you set. The kubelet also reserves at least the request amount of that system resource specifically for that container to use.
Requests and limits
If the node where a Pod is running has enough of a resource available, it's possible (and
allowed) for a container to use more resource than its request
for that resource specifies.
For example, if you set a memory
request of 256 MiB for a container, and that container is in
a Pod scheduled to a Node with 8GiB of memory and no other Pods, then the container can try to use
more RAM.
Limits are a different story. Both cpu
and memory
limits are applied by the kubelet (and
container runtime),
and are ultimately enforced by the kernel. On Linux nodes, the Linux kernel
enforces limits with
cgroups.
The behavior of cpu
and memory
limit enforcement is slightly different.
cpu
limits are enforced by CPU throttling. When a container approaches
its cpu
limit, the kernel will restrict access to the CPU corresponding to the
container's limit. Thus, a cpu
limit is a hard limit the kernel enforces.
Containers may not use more CPU than is specified in their cpu
limit.
memory
limits are enforced by the kernel with out of memory (OOM) kills. When
a container uses more than its memory
limit, the kernel may terminate it. However,
terminations only happen when the kernel detects memory pressure. Thus, a
container that over allocates memory may not be immediately killed. This means
memory
limits are enforced reactively. A container may use more memory than
its memory
limit, but if it does, it may get killed.
Note:
There is an alpha featureMemoryQoS
which attempts to add more preemptive
limit enforcement for memory (as opposed to reactive enforcement by the OOM
killer). However, this effort is
stalled
due to a potential livelock situation a memory hungry can cause.Note:
If you specify a limit for a resource, but do not specify any request, and no admission-time mechanism has applied a default request for that resource, then Kubernetes copies the limit you specified and uses it as the requested value for the resource.Resource types
CPU and memory are each a resource type. A resource type has a base unit. CPU represents compute processing and is specified in units of Kubernetes CPUs. Memory is specified in units of bytes. For Linux workloads, you can specify huge page resources. Huge pages are a Linux-specific feature where the node kernel allocates blocks of memory that are much larger than the default page size.
For example, on a system where the default page size is 4KiB, you could specify a limit,
hugepages-2Mi: 80Mi
. If the container tries allocating over 40 2MiB huge pages (a
total of 80 MiB), that allocation fails.
Note:
You cannot overcommithugepages-*
resources.
This is different from the memory
and cpu
resources.CPU and memory are collectively referred to as compute resources, or resources. Compute resources are measurable quantities that can be requested, allocated, and consumed. They are distinct from API resources. API resources, such as Pods and Services are objects that can be read and modified through the Kubernetes API server.
Resource requests and limits of Pod and container
For each container, you can specify resource limits and requests, including the following:
spec.containers[].resources.limits.cpu
spec.containers[].resources.limits.memory
spec.containers[].resources.limits.hugepages-<size>
spec.containers[].resources.requests.cpu
spec.containers[].resources.requests.memory
spec.containers[].resources.requests.hugepages-<size>
Although you can only specify requests and limits for individual containers, it is also useful to think about the overall resource requests and limits for a Pod. For a particular resource, a Pod resource request/limit is the sum of the resource requests/limits of that type for each container in the Pod.
Pod-level resource specification
Kubernetes v1.32 [alpha]
(enabled by default: false)Starting in Kubernetes 1.32, you can also specify resource requests and limits at
the Pod level. the Pod level. At Pod level, Kubernetes 1.32
only supports resource requests or limits for specific resource types: cpu
and /
or memory
. This feature is currently in alpha and with the feature enabled,
Kubernetes allows you to declare an overall resource budget for the Pod, which is
especially helpful when dealing with a large number of containers where it can be
difficult to accurately gauge individual resource needs. Additionally, it enables
containers within a Pod to share idle resources with each other, improving resource
utilization.
For a Pod, you can specify resource limits and requests for CPU and memory by including the following:
spec.resources.limits.cpu
spec.resources.limits.memory
spec.resources.requests.cpu
spec.resources.requests.memory
Resource units in Kubernetes
CPU resource units
Limits and requests for CPU resources are measured in cpu units. In Kubernetes, 1 CPU unit is equivalent to 1 physical CPU core, or 1 virtual core, depending on whether the node is a physical host or a virtual machine running inside a physical machine.
Fractional requests are allowed. When you define a container with
spec.containers[].resources.requests.cpu
set to 0.5
, you are requesting half
as much CPU time compared to if you asked for 1.0
CPU.
For CPU resource units, the quantity expression 0.1
is equivalent to the
expression 100m
, which can be read as "one hundred millicpu". Some people say
"one hundred millicores", and this is understood to mean the same thing.
CPU resource is always specified as an absolute amount of resource, never as a relative amount. For example,
500m
CPU represents the roughly same amount of computing power whether that container
runs on a single-core, dual-core, or 48-core machine.
Note:
Kubernetes doesn't allow you to specify CPU resources with a precision finer than
1m
or 0.001
CPU. To avoid accidentally using an invalid CPU quantity, it's useful to specify CPU units using the milliCPU form
instead of the decimal form when using less than 1 CPU unit.
For example, you have a Pod that uses 5m
or 0.005
CPU and would like to decrease
its CPU resources. By using the decimal form, it's harder to spot that 0.0005
CPU
is an invalid value, while by using the milliCPU form, it's easier to spot that
0.5m
is an invalid value.
Memory resource units
Limits and requests for memory
are measured in bytes. You can express memory as
a plain integer or as a fixed-point number using one of these
quantity suffixes:
E, P, T, G, M, k. You can also use the power-of-two equivalents: Ei, Pi, Ti, Gi,
Mi, Ki. For example, the following represent roughly the same value:
128974848, 129e6, 129M, 128974848000m, 123Mi
Pay attention to the case of the suffixes. If you request 400m
of memory, this is a request
for 0.4 bytes. Someone who types that probably meant to ask for 400 mebibytes (400Mi
)
or 400 megabytes (400M
).
Container resources example
The following Pod has two containers. Both containers are defined with a request for 0.25 CPU and 64MiB (226 bytes) of memory. Each container has a limit of 0.5 CPU and 128MiB of memory. You can say the Pod has a request of 0.5 CPU and 128 MiB of memory, and a limit of 1 CPU and 256MiB of memory.
---
apiVersion: v1
kind: Pod
metadata:
name: frontend
spec:
containers:
- name: app
image: images.my-company.example/app:v4
resources:
requests:
memory: "64Mi"
cpu: "250m"
limits:
memory: "128Mi"
cpu: "500m"
- name: log-aggregator
image: images.my-company.example/log-aggregator:v6
resources:
requests:
memory: "64Mi"
cpu: "250m"
limits:
memory: "128Mi"
cpu: "500m"
Pod resources example
Kubernetes v1.32 [alpha]
(enabled by default: false)The following Pod has an explicit request of 1 CPU and 100 MiB of memory, and an
explicit limit of 1 CPU and 200 MiB of memory. The pod-resources-demo-ctr-1
container has explicit requests and limits set. However, the
pod-resources-demo-ctr-2
container will simply share the resources available
within the Pod resource boundaries, as it does not have explicit requests and limits
set.
apiVersion: v1
kind: Pod
metadata:
name: pod-resources-demo
namespace: pod-resources-example
spec:
resources:
limits:
cpu: "1"
memory: "200Mi"
requests:
cpu: "1"
memory: "100Mi"
containers:
- name: pod-resources-demo-ctr-1
image: nginx
resources:
limits:
cpu: "0.5"
memory: "100Mi"
requests:
cpu: "0.5"
memory: "50Mi"
- name: pod-resources-demo-ctr-2
image: fedora
command:
- sleep
- inf
How Pods with resource requests are scheduled
When you create a Pod, the Kubernetes scheduler selects a node for the Pod to run on. Each node has a maximum capacity for each of the resource types: the amount of CPU and memory it can provide for Pods. The scheduler ensures that, for each resource type, the sum of the resource requests of the scheduled containers is less than the capacity of the node. Note that although actual memory or CPU resource usage on nodes is very low, the scheduler still refuses to place a Pod on a node if the capacity check fails. This protects against a resource shortage on a node when resource usage later increases, for example, during a daily peak in request rate.
How Kubernetes applies resource requests and limits
When the kubelet starts a container as part of a Pod, the kubelet passes that container's requests and limits for memory and CPU to the container runtime.
On Linux, the container runtime typically configures kernel cgroups that apply and enforce the limits you defined.
- The CPU limit defines a hard ceiling on how much CPU time the container can use. During each scheduling interval (time slice), the Linux kernel checks to see if this limit is exceeded; if so, the kernel waits before allowing that cgroup to resume execution.
- The CPU request typically defines a weighting. If several different containers (cgroups) want to run on a contended system, workloads with larger CPU requests are allocated more CPU time than workloads with small requests.
- The memory request is mainly used during (Kubernetes) Pod scheduling. On a node that uses
cgroups v2, the container runtime might use the memory request as a hint to set
memory.min
andmemory.low
. - The memory limit defines a memory limit for that cgroup. If the container tries to allocate more memory than this limit, the Linux kernel out-of-memory subsystem activates and, typically, intervenes by stopping one of the processes in the container that tried to allocate memory. If that process is the container's PID 1, and the container is marked as restartable, Kubernetes restarts the container.
- The memory limit for the Pod or container can also apply to pages in memory backed
volumes, such as an
emptyDir
. The kubelet trackstmpfs
emptyDir volumes as container memory use, rather than as local ephemeral storage. When using memory backedemptyDir
, be sure to check the notes below.
If a container exceeds its memory request and the node that it runs on becomes short of memory overall, it is likely that the Pod the container belongs to will be evicted.
A container might or might not be allowed to exceed its CPU limit for extended periods of time. However, container runtimes don't terminate Pods or containers for excessive CPU usage.
To determine whether a container cannot be scheduled or is being killed due to resource limits, see the Troubleshooting section.
Monitoring compute & memory resource usage
The kubelet reports the resource usage of a Pod as part of the Pod
status
.
If optional tools for monitoring are available in your cluster, then Pod resource usage can be retrieved either from the Metrics API directly or from your monitoring tools.
Considerations for memory backed emptyDir
volumes
Caution:
If you do not specify asizeLimit
for an emptyDir
volume, that volume may
consume up to that pod's memory limit (Pod.spec.containers[].resources.limits.memory
).
If you do not set a memory limit, the pod has no upper bound on memory consumption,
and can consume all available memory on the node. Kubernetes schedules pods based
on resource requests (Pod.spec.containers[].resources.requests
) and will not
consider memory usage above the request when deciding if another pod can fit on
a given node. This can result in a denial of service and cause the OS to do
out-of-memory (OOM) handling. It is possible to create any number of emptyDir
s
that could potentially consume all available memory on the node, making OOM
more likely.From the perspective of memory management, there are some similarities between
when a process uses memory as a work area and when using memory-backed
emptyDir
. But when using memory as a volume, like memory-backed emptyDir
,
there are additional points below that you should be careful of:
- Files stored on a memory-backed volume are almost entirely managed by the user application. Unlike when used as a work area for a process, you can not rely on things like language-level garbage collection.
- The purpose of writing files to a volume is to save data or pass it between applications. Neither Kubernetes nor the OS may automatically delete files from a volume, so memory used by those files can not be reclaimed when the system or the pod are under memory pressure.
- A memory-backed
emptyDir
is useful because of its performance, but memory is generally much smaller in size and much higher in cost than other storage media, such as disks or SSDs. Using large amounts of memory foremptyDir
volumes may affect the normal operation of your pod or of the whole node, so should be used carefully.
If you are administering a cluster or namespace, you can also set
ResourceQuota that limits memory use;
you may also want to define a LimitRange
for additional enforcement.
If you specify a spec.containers[].resources.limits.memory
for each Pod,
then the maximum size of an emptyDir
volume will be the pod's memory limit.
As an alternative, a cluster administrator can enforce size limits for
emptyDir
volumes in new Pods using a policy mechanism such as
ValidationAdmissionPolicy.
Local ephemeral storage
Kubernetes v1.25 [stable]
Nodes have local ephemeral storage, backed by locally-attached writeable devices or, sometimes, by RAM. "Ephemeral" means that there is no long-term guarantee about durability.
Pods use ephemeral local storage for scratch space, caching, and for logs.
The kubelet can provide scratch space to Pods using local ephemeral storage to
mount emptyDir
volumes into containers.
The kubelet also uses this kind of storage to hold node-level container logs, container images, and the writable layers of running containers.
Caution:
If a node fails, the data in its ephemeral storage can be lost. Your applications cannot expect any performance SLAs (disk IOPS for example) from local ephemeral storage.Note:
To make the resource quota work on ephemeral-storage, two things need to be done:
- An admin sets the resource quota for ephemeral-storage in a namespace.
- A user needs to specify limits for the ephemeral-storage resource in the Pod spec.
If the user doesn't specify the ephemeral-storage resource limit in the Pod spec, the resource quota is not enforced on ephemeral-storage.
Kubernetes lets you track, reserve and limit the amount of ephemeral local storage a Pod can consume.
Configurations for local ephemeral storage
Kubernetes supports two ways to configure local ephemeral storage on a node:
In this configuration, you place all different kinds of ephemeral local data
(emptyDir
volumes, writeable layers, container images, logs) into one filesystem.
The most effective way to configure the kubelet means dedicating this filesystem
to Kubernetes (kubelet) data.
The kubelet also writes node-level container logs and treats these similarly to ephemeral local storage.
The kubelet writes logs to files inside its configured log directory (/var/log
by default); and has a base directory for other locally stored data
(/var/lib/kubelet
by default).
Typically, both /var/lib/kubelet
and /var/log
are on the system root filesystem,
and the kubelet is designed with that layout in mind.
Your node can have as many other filesystems, not used for Kubernetes, as you like.
You have a filesystem on the node that you're using for ephemeral data that
comes from running Pods: logs, and emptyDir
volumes. You can use this filesystem
for other data (for example: system logs not related to Kubernetes); it can even
be the root filesystem.
The kubelet also writes node-level container logs into the first filesystem, and treats these similarly to ephemeral local storage.
You also use a separate filesystem, backed by a different logical storage device. In this configuration, the directory where you tell the kubelet to place container image layers and writeable layers is on this second filesystem.
The first filesystem does not hold any image layers or writeable layers.
Your node can have as many other filesystems, not used for Kubernetes, as you like.
The kubelet can measure how much local storage it is using. It does this provided that you have set up the node using one of the supported configurations for local ephemeral storage.
If you have a different configuration, then the kubelet does not apply resource limits for ephemeral local storage.
Note:
The kubelet trackstmpfs
emptyDir volumes as container memory use, rather
than as local ephemeral storage.Note:
The kubelet will only track the root filesystem for ephemeral storage. OS layouts that mount a separate disk to/var/lib/kubelet
or /var/lib/containers
will not report ephemeral storage correctly.Setting requests and limits for local ephemeral storage
You can specify ephemeral-storage
for managing local ephemeral storage. Each
container of a Pod can specify either or both of the following:
spec.containers[].resources.limits.ephemeral-storage
spec.containers[].resources.requests.ephemeral-storage
Limits and requests for ephemeral-storage
are measured in byte quantities.
You can express storage as a plain integer or as a fixed-point number using one of these suffixes:
E, P, T, G, M, k. You can also use the power-of-two equivalents: Ei, Pi, Ti, Gi,
Mi, Ki. For example, the following quantities all represent roughly the same value:
128974848
129e6
129M
123Mi
Pay attention to the case of the suffixes. If you request 400m
of ephemeral-storage, this is a request
for 0.4 bytes. Someone who types that probably meant to ask for 400 mebibytes (400Mi
)
or 400 megabytes (400M
).
In the following example, the Pod has two containers. Each container has a request of
2GiB of local ephemeral storage. Each container has a limit of 4GiB of local ephemeral
storage. Therefore, the Pod has a request of 4GiB of local ephemeral storage, and
a limit of 8GiB of local ephemeral storage. 500Mi of that limit could be
consumed by the emptyDir
volume.
apiVersion: v1
kind: Pod
metadata:
name: frontend
spec:
containers:
- name: app
image: images.my-company.example/app:v4
resources:
requests:
ephemeral-storage: "2Gi"
limits:
ephemeral-storage: "4Gi"
volumeMounts:
- name: ephemeral
mountPath: "/tmp"
- name: log-aggregator
image: images.my-company.example/log-aggregator:v6
resources:
requests:
ephemeral-storage: "2Gi"
limits:
ephemeral-storage: "4Gi"
volumeMounts:
- name: ephemeral
mountPath: "/tmp"
volumes:
- name: ephemeral
emptyDir:
sizeLimit: 500Mi
How Pods with ephemeral-storage requests are scheduled
When you create a Pod, the Kubernetes scheduler selects a node for the Pod to run on. Each node has a maximum amount of local ephemeral storage it can provide for Pods. For more information, see Node Allocatable.
The scheduler ensures that the sum of the resource requests of the scheduled containers is less than the capacity of the node.
Ephemeral storage consumption management
If the kubelet is managing local ephemeral storage as a resource, then the kubelet measures storage use in:
emptyDir
volumes, except tmpfsemptyDir
volumes- directories holding node-level logs
- writeable container layers
If a Pod is using more ephemeral storage than you allow it to, the kubelet sets an eviction signal that triggers Pod eviction.
For container-level isolation, if a container's writable layer and log usage exceeds its storage limit, the kubelet marks the Pod for eviction.
For pod-level isolation the kubelet works out an overall Pod storage limit by
summing the limits for the containers in that Pod. In this case, if the sum of
the local ephemeral storage usage from all containers and also the Pod's emptyDir
volumes exceeds the overall Pod storage limit, then the kubelet also marks the Pod
for eviction.
Caution:
If the kubelet is not measuring local ephemeral storage, then a Pod that exceeds its local storage limit will not be evicted for breaching local storage resource limits.
However, if the filesystem space for writeable container layers, node-level logs,
or emptyDir
volumes falls low, the node
taints itself as short on local storage
and this taint triggers eviction for any Pods that don't specifically tolerate the taint.
See the supported configurations for ephemeral local storage.
The kubelet supports different ways to measure Pod storage use:
The kubelet performs regular, scheduled checks that scan each
emptyDir
volume, container log directory, and writeable container layer.
The scan measures how much space is used.
Note:
In this mode, the kubelet does not track open file descriptors for deleted files.
If you (or a container) create a file inside an emptyDir
volume,
something then opens that file, and you delete the file while it is
still open, then the inode for the deleted file stays until you close
that file but the kubelet does not categorize the space as in use.
Kubernetes v1.31 [beta]
(enabled by default: false)Project quotas are an operating-system level feature for managing
storage use on filesystems. With Kubernetes, you can enable project
quotas for monitoring storage use. Make sure that the filesystem
backing the emptyDir
volumes, on the node, provides project quota support.
For example, XFS and ext4fs offer project quotas.
Note:
Project quotas let you monitor storage use; they do not enforce limits.Kubernetes uses project IDs starting from 1048576
. The IDs in use are
registered in /etc/projects
and /etc/projid
. If project IDs in
this range are used for other purposes on the system, those project
IDs must be registered in /etc/projects
and /etc/projid
so that
Kubernetes does not use them.
Quotas are faster and more accurate than directory scanning. When a directory is assigned to a project, all files created under a directory are created in that project, and the kernel merely has to keep track of how many blocks are in use by files in that project. If a file is created and deleted, but has an open file descriptor, it continues to consume space. Quota tracking records that space accurately whereas directory scans overlook the storage used by deleted files.
To use quotas to track a pod's resource usage, the pod must be in a user namespace. Within user namespaces, the kernel restricts changes to projectIDs on the filesystem, ensuring the reliability of storage metrics calculated by quotas.
If you want to use project quotas, you should:
Enable the
LocalStorageCapacityIsolationFSQuotaMonitoring=true
feature gate using thefeatureGates
field in the kubelet configuration.Ensure the
UserNamespacesSupport
feature gate is enabled, and that the kernel, CRI implementation and OCI runtime support user namespaces.Ensure that the root filesystem (or optional runtime filesystem) has project quotas enabled. All XFS filesystems support project quotas. For ext4 filesystems, you need to enable the project quota tracking feature while the filesystem is not mounted.
# For ext4, with /dev/block-device not mounted sudo tune2fs -O project -Q prjquota /dev/block-device
Ensure that the root filesystem (or optional runtime filesystem) is mounted with project quotas enabled. For both XFS and ext4fs, the mount option is named
prjquota
.
If you don't want to use project quotas, you should:
- Disable the
LocalStorageCapacityIsolationFSQuotaMonitoring
feature gate using thefeatureGates
field in the kubelet configuration.
Extended resources
Extended resources are fully-qualified resource names outside the
kubernetes.io
domain. They allow cluster operators to advertise and users to
consume the non-Kubernetes-built-in resources.
There are two steps required to use Extended Resources. First, the cluster operator must advertise an Extended Resource. Second, users must request the Extended Resource in Pods.
Managing extended resources
Node-level extended resources
Node-level extended resources are tied to nodes.
Device plugin managed resources
See Device Plugin for how to advertise device plugin managed resources on each node.
Other resources
To advertise a new node-level extended resource, the cluster operator can
submit a PATCH
HTTP request to the API server to specify the available
quantity in the status.capacity
for a node in the cluster. After this
operation, the node's status.capacity
will include a new resource. The
status.allocatable
field is updated automatically with the new resource
asynchronously by the kubelet.
Because the scheduler uses the node's status.allocatable
value when
evaluating Pod fitness, the scheduler only takes account of the new value after
that asynchronous update. There may be a short delay between patching the
node capacity with a new resource and the time when the first Pod that requests
the resource can be scheduled on that node.
Example:
Here is an example showing how to use curl
to form an HTTP request that
advertises five "example.com/foo" resources on node k8s-node-1
whose master
is k8s-master
.
curl --header "Content-Type: application/json-patch+json" \
--request PATCH \
--data '[{"op": "add", "path": "/status/capacity/example.com~1foo", "value": "5"}]' \
http://k8s-master:8080/api/v1/nodes/k8s-node-1/status
Note:
In the preceding request,~1
is the encoding for the character /
in the patch path. The operation path value in JSON-Patch is interpreted as a
JSON-Pointer. For more details, see
IETF RFC 6901, section 3.Cluster-level extended resources
Cluster-level extended resources are not tied to nodes. They are usually managed by scheduler extenders, which handle the resource consumption and resource quota.
You can specify the extended resources that are handled by scheduler extenders in scheduler configuration
Example:
The following configuration for a scheduler policy indicates that the cluster-level extended resource "example.com/foo" is handled by the scheduler extender.
- The scheduler sends a Pod to the scheduler extender only if the Pod requests "example.com/foo".
- The
ignoredByScheduler
field specifies that the scheduler does not check the "example.com/foo" resource in itsPodFitsResources
predicate.
{
"kind": "Policy",
"apiVersion": "v1",
"extenders": [
{
"urlPrefix":"<extender-endpoint>",
"bindVerb": "bind",
"managedResources": [
{
"name": "example.com/foo",
"ignoredByScheduler": true
}
]
}
]
}
Consuming extended resources
Users can consume extended resources in Pod specs like CPU and memory. The scheduler takes care of the resource accounting so that no more than the available amount is simultaneously allocated to Pods.
The API server restricts quantities of extended resources to whole numbers.
Examples of valid quantities are 3
, 3000m
and 3Ki
. Examples of
invalid quantities are 0.5
and 1500m
(because 1500m
would result in 1.5
).
Note:
Extended resources replace Opaque Integer Resources. Users can use any domain name prefix other thankubernetes.io
which is reserved.To consume an extended resource in a Pod, include the resource name as a key
in the spec.containers[].resources.limits
map in the container spec.
Note:
Extended resources cannot be overcommitted, so request and limit must be equal if both are present in a container spec.A Pod is scheduled only if all of the resource requests are satisfied, including
CPU, memory and any extended resources. The Pod remains in the PENDING
state
as long as the resource request cannot be satisfied.
Example:
The Pod below requests 2 CPUs and 1 "example.com/foo" (an extended resource).
apiVersion: v1
kind: Pod
metadata:
name: my-pod
spec:
containers:
- name: my-container
image: myimage
resources:
requests:
cpu: 2
example.com/foo: 1
limits:
example.com/foo: 1
PID limiting
Process ID (PID) limits allow for the configuration of a kubelet to limit the number of PIDs that a given Pod can consume. See PID Limiting for information.
Troubleshooting
My Pods are pending with event message FailedScheduling
If the scheduler cannot find any node where a Pod can fit, the Pod remains
unscheduled until a place can be found. An
Event is produced
each time the scheduler fails to find a place for the Pod. You can use kubectl
to view the events for a Pod; for example:
kubectl describe pod frontend | grep -A 9999999999 Events
Events:
Type Reason Age From Message
---- ------ ---- ---- -------
Warning FailedScheduling 23s default-scheduler 0/42 nodes available: insufficient cpu
In the preceding example, the Pod named "frontend" fails to be scheduled due to insufficient CPU resource on any node. Similar error messages can also suggest failure due to insufficient memory (PodExceedsFreeMemory). In general, if a Pod is pending with a message of this type, there are several things to try:
- Add more nodes to the cluster.
- Terminate unneeded Pods to make room for pending Pods.
- Check that the Pod is not larger than all the nodes. For example, if all the
nodes have a capacity of
cpu: 1
, then a Pod with a request ofcpu: 1.1
will never be scheduled. - Check for node taints. If most of your nodes are tainted, and the new Pod does not tolerate that taint, the scheduler only considers placements onto the remaining nodes that don't have that taint.
You can check node capacities and amounts allocated with the
kubectl describe nodes
command. For example:
kubectl describe nodes e2e-test-node-pool-4lw4
Name: e2e-test-node-pool-4lw4
[ ... lines removed for clarity ...]
Capacity:
cpu: 2
memory: 7679792Ki
pods: 110
Allocatable:
cpu: 1800m
memory: 7474992Ki
pods: 110
[ ... lines removed for clarity ...]
Non-terminated Pods: (5 in total)
Namespace Name CPU Requests CPU Limits Memory Requests Memory Limits
--------- ---- ------------ ---------- --------------- -------------
kube-system fluentd-gcp-v1.38-28bv1 100m (5%) 0 (0%) 200Mi (2%) 200Mi (2%)
kube-system kube-dns-3297075139-61lj3 260m (13%) 0 (0%) 100Mi (1%) 170Mi (2%)
kube-system kube-proxy-e2e-test-... 100m (5%) 0 (0%) 0 (0%) 0 (0%)
kube-system monitoring-influxdb-grafana-v4-z1m12 200m (10%) 200m (10%) 600Mi (8%) 600Mi (8%)
kube-system node-problem-detector-v0.1-fj7m3 20m (1%) 200m (10%) 20Mi (0%) 100Mi (1%)
Allocated resources:
(Total limits may be over 100 percent, i.e., overcommitted.)
CPU Requests CPU Limits Memory Requests Memory Limits
------------ ---------- --------------- -------------
680m (34%) 400m (20%) 920Mi (11%) 1070Mi (13%)
In the preceding output, you can see that if a Pod requests more than 1.120 CPUs or more than 6.23Gi of memory, that Pod will not fit on the node.
By looking at the “Pods” section, you can see which Pods are taking up space on the node.
The amount of resources available to Pods is less than the node capacity because
system daemons use a portion of the available resources. Within the Kubernetes API,
each Node has a .status.allocatable
field
(see NodeStatus
for details).
The .status.allocatable
field describes the amount of resources that are available
to Pods on that node (for example: 15 virtual CPUs and 7538 MiB of memory).
For more information on node allocatable resources in Kubernetes, see
Reserve Compute Resources for System Daemons.
You can configure resource quotas to limit the total amount of resources that a namespace can consume. Kubernetes enforces quotas for objects in particular namespace when there is a ResourceQuota in that namespace. For example, if you assign specific namespaces to different teams, you can add ResourceQuotas into those namespaces. Setting resource quotas helps to prevent one team from using so much of any resource that this over-use affects other teams.
You should also consider what access you grant to that namespace: full write access to a namespace allows someone with that access to remove any resource, including a configured ResourceQuota.
My container is terminated
Your container might get terminated because it is resource-starved. To check
whether a container is being killed because it is hitting a resource limit, call
kubectl describe pod
on the Pod of interest:
kubectl describe pod simmemleak-hra99
The output is similar to:
Name: simmemleak-hra99
Namespace: default
Image(s): saadali/simmemleak
Node: kubernetes-node-tf0f/10.240.216.66
Labels: name=simmemleak
Status: Running
Reason:
Message:
IP: 10.244.2.75
Containers:
simmemleak:
Image: saadali/simmemleak:latest
Limits:
cpu: 100m
memory: 50Mi
State: Running
Started: Tue, 07 Jul 2019 12:54:41 -0700
Last State: Terminated
Reason: OOMKilled
Exit Code: 137
Started: Fri, 07 Jul 2019 12:54:30 -0700
Finished: Fri, 07 Jul 2019 12:54:33 -0700
Ready: False
Restart Count: 5
Conditions:
Type Status
Ready False
Events:
Type Reason Age From Message
---- ------ ---- ---- -------
Normal Scheduled 42s default-scheduler Successfully assigned simmemleak-hra99 to kubernetes-node-tf0f
Normal Pulled 41s kubelet Container image "saadali/simmemleak:latest" already present on machine
Normal Created 41s kubelet Created container simmemleak
Normal Started 40s kubelet Started container simmemleak
Normal Killing 32s kubelet Killing container with id ead3fb35-5cf5-44ed-9ae1-488115be66c6: Need to kill Pod
In the preceding example, the Restart Count: 5
indicates that the simmemleak
container in the Pod was terminated and restarted five times (so far).
The OOMKilled
reason shows that the container tried to use more memory than its limit.
Your next step might be to check the application code for a memory leak. If you find that the application is behaving how you expect, consider setting a higher memory limit (and possibly request) for that container.
What's next
- Get hands-on experience assigning Memory resources to containers and Pods.
- Get hands-on experience assigning CPU resources to containers and Pods.
- Read how the API reference defines a container and its resource requirements
- Read about project quotas in XFS
- Read more about the kube-scheduler configuration reference (v1)
- Read more about Quality of Service classes for Pods