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6 Observe Metrics Server Data

This lesson focuses on observing Metrics Server data, specifically the memory consumption of Pods in the kube-system namespace and across all namespaces. It covers how to retrieve resource usage using various kubectl commands, including options for viewing container-level metrics and scraping metrics in JSON format. The Metrics Server is designed for machine consumption rather than direct human use, setting the stage for future lessons on auto-scaling Pods based on resource utilization.

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2 views6 pages

6 Observe Metrics Server Data

This lesson focuses on observing Metrics Server data, specifically the memory consumption of Pods in the kube-system namespace and across all namespaces. It covers how to retrieve resource usage using various kubectl commands, including options for viewing container-level metrics and scraping metrics in JSON format. The Metrics Server is designed for machine consumption rather than direct human use, setting the stage for future lessons on auto-scaling Pods based on resource utilization.

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kotten7
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© © All Rights Reserved
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Observe Metrics Server Data

In this lesson, we will observe the data contained in Metrics Server.

WE'LL COVER THE FOLLOWING

• Memory consumption of pods running in kube-system


• Get resource usage of pods using --all-namespaces
• Get resource usage of pods using --containers
• Flow of data using kubectl top
• Scrape the metrics using JSON
• Metrics Server for machines

Resource usage of the nodes is useful but is not what we’re looking for. In this
chapter, we’re focused on auto-scaling Pods. But, before we get there, we
should observe how much memory each of our Pods is using. We’ll start with
those running in the kube-system Namespace.

Memory consumption of pods running in kube-


system #
Execute the following from your command line to see the memory
consumption of all the pods running in the Kube-system.

kubectl -n kube-system top pod

The output (on Docker For Desktop) is as follows.

NAME CPU(cores) MEMORY(bytes)


etcd-docker-for-desktop 16m 74Mi
kube-apiserver-docker-for-desktop 33m 427Mi
kube-controller-manager-docker-for-desktop 44m 63Mi
kube-dns-86f4d74b45-c47nh 1m 39Mi
kube-proxy-r56kd 2m 22Mi
kube-scheduler-docker-for-desktop 13m 23Mi

We can see resource usage (CPU and memory) for each of the Pods currently
running in kube-system . If we do not find better tools, we could use that
information to adjust the requests of those Pods to be more accurate.
However, there are better ways to get that info, so we’ll skip adjustments for
now. Instead, let’s try to get current resource usage of all the Pods, no matter
the Namespace.

Get resource usage of pods using --all-


namespaces #
kubectl top pods --all-namespaces

The output (on Docker For Desktop) is as follows.

NAMESPACE NAME CPU(cores) MEMORY(b


ytes)
docker compose-7447646cf5-wqbwz 0m 11M
i
docker compose-api-6fbc44c575-gwhxt 0m 14M
i
kube-system etcd-docker-for-desktop 16m 74M
i
kube-system kube-apiserver-docker-for-desktop 33m 427M
i
kube-system kube-controller-manager-docker-for-desktop 46m 63M
i
kube-system kube-dns-86f4d74b45-c47nh 1m 38M
i
kube-system kube-proxy-r56kd 3m 22M
i
kube-system kube-scheduler-docker-for-desktop 14m 23M
i
metrics metrics-server-5d78586d76-pbqj8 0m 10M
i

That output shows the same information as the previous one, only extended
to all Namespaces. There should be no need to comment on it.

Get resource usage of pods using --containers #


Often, metrics of a Pod are not granular enough, and we need to observe the
resources of each of the containers that constitute a Pod. All we need to do to

get container metrics is to add --containers argument.

kubectl top pods \


--all-namespaces \
--containers

The output (on Docker For Desktop) is as follows.

NAMESPACE POD NAM


E CPU(cores) MEMORY(bytes)
docker compose-7447646cf5-wqbwz compos
e 0m 11Mi
docker compose-api-6fbc44c575-gwhxt compos
e 0m 14Mi
kube-system etcd-docker-for-desktop etc
d 16m 74Mi
kube-system kube-apiserver-docker-for-desktop kube-apiserver
33m 427Mi
kube-system kube-controller-manager-docker-for-desktop kube-controller-man
ager 46m 63Mi
kube-system kube-dns-86f4d74b45-c47nh kubedn
s 0m 13Mi
kube-system kube-dns-86f4d74b45-c47nh dnsmas
q 0m 10Mi
kube-system kube-dns-86f4d74b45-c47nh sideca
r 1m 14Mi
kube-system kube-proxy-r56kd kube-proxy
3m 22Mi
kube-system kube-scheduler-docker-for-desktop kube-scheduler
14m 23Mi
metrics metrics-server-5d78586d76-pbqj8 metrics-server
0m 10Mi

We can see that this time, the output shows each container separately. We can,
for example, observe metrics of the kube-dns-* Pod separated into three
containers ( kubedns , dnsmasq , sidecar ).

Flow of data using kubectl top #


When we request metrics through kubectl top , the flow of data is almost the
same as when the scheduler makes requests. A request is sent to the API
Server (Master Metrics API), which gets data from the Metrics Server

which, in turn, was collecting information from Kubeletes running on the


nodes of the cluster.

The flow of the data to and from the Metrics Server (arrows show directions of data flow)

Q
kubectl command retrieves data from Metrics Server.
COMPLETED 0%
1 of 1

Scrape the metrics using JSON #


While kubectl top command is useful to observe current metrics, it is pretty
useless if we’d like to access them from other tools. After all, the goal is not for
us to sit in front of a terminal with watch kubectl top pods command. That
would be a waste of our (human) talent. Instead, our goal should be to scrape
those metrics from other tools and create alerts and (maybe) dashboards
based on both real-time and historical data. For that, we need output in JSON
or some other machine-parsable format. Luckily, kubectl allows us to invoke
its API directly in raw format and retrieve the same result as if a tool would
query it.

kubectl get \
--raw "/apis/metrics.k8s.io/v1beta1" \
| jq '.'

The output is as follows.

{
"kind": "APIResourceList",
"apiVersion": "v1",
"groupVersion": "metrics.k8s.io/v1beta1",
"resources": [
{
"name": "nodes",
"singularName": "",
"namespaced": false,
"kind": "NodeMetrics",
"verbs": [
"get",
"list"
]
},
{
"name": "pods",
"singularName": "",
"namespaced": true,
"kind": "PodMetrics",
"verbs": [
"get",
"list"
]
}

]
}

We can see that the /apis/metrics.k8s.io/v1beta1 endpoint is an index API


that has two resources ( nodes and pods ).

Let’s take a closer look at the pods resource of the metrics API.

kubectl get \
--raw "/apis/metrics.k8s.io/v1beta1/pods" \
| jq '.'

The output is too big to display here, so I’ll leave it up to you to explore it.
You’ll notice that the output is JSON equivalent of what we observed through
the kubectl top pods --all-namespaces --containers command.

Metrics Server for machines #


There are two important things to note. First of all, it provides current (or
short-term) memory and CPU utilization of the containers running inside a
cluster. The second and more important note is that we will not use it directly.
Metrics Server was not designed for humans but for machines. We’ll get
there later. For now, remember that there is a thing called Metrics Server and
that you should not use it directly (once you adopt a tool that will scrape its
metrics).

Now that we explored Metrics Server , we’ll try to put it to good use and learn
how to auto-scale our Pods based on resource utilization, in the next lesson.

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