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Document control plane monitoring
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serathius committed Nov 15, 2019
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105 changes: 105 additions & 0 deletions content/en/docs/concepts/cluster-administration/monitoring.md
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---
title: Metrics For The Kubernetes Control Plane
reviewers:
- brancz
- logicalhan
- RainbowMango
content_template: templates/concept
weight: 60
---

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System component metrics can give a better look into what is happening inside them. Metrics are particularly useful for building dashboards and alerts.

Metrics in Kubernetes control plane components are exposed in Prometheus text format.

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## Metrics in Kubernetes

In most cases those metrics are available on `/metrics` endpoint of the HTTP server. For components that doesn't expose endpoint by default it can be enabled using `--bind-address` flag.

Examples of those components:
* {{< glossary_tooltip term_id="kube-controller-manager" text="kube-controller-manager" >}}
* {{< glossary_tooltip term_id="kube-proxy" text="kube-proxy" >}}
* {{< glossary_tooltip term_id="kube-apiserver" text="kube-apiserver" >}}
* {{< glossary_tooltip term_id="kube-scheduler" text="kube-scheduler" >}}
* {{< glossary_tooltip term_id="kubelet" text="kubelet" >}}

Note that {{< glossary_tooltip term_id="kubelet" text="kubelet" >}} also exposes metrics in `/metrics/cadvisor` and `/metrics/resource` endpoints. Those metrics do not have same lifecycle.

If your cluster uses {{< glossary_tooltip term_id="rbac" text="RBAC" >}}, reading metrics requires authorization via a user, group or ServiceAccount with a ClusterRole that allows accessing `/metrics`.
For example:
```
apiVersion: rbac.authorization.k8s.io/v1
kind: ClusterRole
metadata:
name: prometheus
rules:
- nonResourceURLs:
- "/metrics"
verbs:
- get
```

## Metric lifecycle

Alpha metric → Stable metric → Deprecated metric → Hidden metric → Deletion

Alpha metrics have no stability guarantees; as such they can be modified or deleted at any time.

Stable metrics can be guaranteed to not change; Specifically, stability means:

* the metric itself will not be deleted (or renamed)
* the type of metric will not be modified
* no labels can be added or removed from this metric

Deprecated metric signal that the metric will eventually be deleted; to find which version, you need to check annotation, which includes from which kubernetes version that metric will be considered deprecated.

Before deprecation:

```
# HELP some_counter this counts things
# TYPE some_counter counter
some_counter 0
```

After deprecation:

```
# HELP some_counter (Deprecated since 1.15.0) this counts things
# TYPE some_counter counter
some_counter 0
```

Hidden metrics will no longer be exposed by default; to use a hidden metric, you need to override the configuration for the relevant cluster component.

Deleted metrics will no longer be available.


## Show Hidden Metrics

As described above, admins can enable hidden metrics through a command-line flag on a specific binary. This intends to be used as an escape hatch for admins if they missed the migration of the metrics deprecated in the last release.

The flag `show-hidden-metrics-for-version` takes a version for which you want to show metrics deprecated in that release. The version is expressed as x.y, where x is the major version, y is the minor version. The patch version is not needed even though a metrics can be deprecated in a patch release, the reason for that is the metrics deprecation policy runs against the minor release.

The flag can only take the previous minor version as it's value. All metrics hidden in previous will be emitted if admins set the previous version to `show-hidden-metrics-for-version`. The too old version is not allowed because this violates the metrics deprecated policy.

Take metric `A` as an example, here assumed that `A` is deprecated in 1.n. According to metrics deprecated policy, we can reach the following conclusion:

* In release `1.n`, the metric is deprecated, and it can be emitted by default.
* In release `1.n+1`, the metric is hidden by default and it can be emitted by command line `show-hidden-metrics-for-version=1.n`.
* In release `1.n+2`, the metric should be removed from the codebase. No escape hatch anymore.

If you're upgrading from release `1.12` to `1.13`, but still depend on a metric `A` deprecated in `1.12`, you should set hidden metrics via command line: `--show-hidden-metrics=1.12` and remember to remove this metric dependency before upgrading to `1.14`

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{{% capture whatsnext %}}
* Read about the [Prometheus text format](https://github.com/prometheus/docs/blob/master/content/docs/instrumenting/exposition_formats.md#text-based-format) for metrics
* See the list of [stable Kubernetes metrics](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/blob/master/test/instrumentation/testdata/stable-metrics-list.yaml)
* Read about the [Kubernetes deprecation policy](https://kubernetes.io/docs/reference/using-api/deprecation-policy/#deprecating-a-feature-or-behavior )
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1 change: 1 addition & 0 deletions data/concepts.yml
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- docs/concepts/cluster-administration/networking.md
- docs/concepts/cluster-administration/network-plugins.md
- docs/concepts/cluster-administration/logging.md
- docs/concepts/cluster-administration/monitoring.md
- docs/concepts/cluster-administration/kubelet-garbage-collection.md
- docs/concepts/cluster-administration/federation.md
- docs/concepts/cluster-administration/sysctl-cluster.md
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