Cases4 cases

1 to 4 of 4

1. IL-0204 An etcd memory spike overloaded the control plane of a Render Frankfurt cluster, and DNS then failed because CoreDNS ran on the rebooted control plane nodes and could not start without the API server

   Render2024

   Symptoms

   In January 2022 an etcd memory spike overloaded the Kubernetes control plane of one of Render's clusters in Frankfurt. At first only operations that need the control plane failed: new deploys and cron job runs.

   Control plane unresponsiveDeploys failingDNS resolution failuresHigh error rate

   Trigger

   A memory spike in etcd overloaded the cluster's control plane.

   Root cause

   Capacity exhaustion

   Component

   etcdCoreDNSKubernetes API server

   Contributing factor

   Unreviewed defaultsHarmful manual action

   Action items

   • Run CoreDNS on data plane nodes instead of control plane nodes
   • Run etcd on dedicated nodes

   Lessons

   CoreDNS can keep answering from its in-memory cache while the API server is down, but it cannot initialise without it. With CoreDNS on the control plane nodes, a reboot or restart during a control plane outage turned a failure of deploys and cron jobs into a failure of requests to services that were already running. The core problem was that the data plane was not isolated enough from the control plane: even without the reboot, the etcd memory spike alone could have forced CoreDNS to restart.

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2. IL-0184 JupyterHub's KubeSpawner could not create containers and kubectl was refused because the API server and other internal certificates of a kubeadm cluster had expired

   dbhang2021

   Symptoms

   KubeSpawner, which starts JupyterHub user containers on Kubernetes, failed to create containers with an error the author had never seen, saying an SSL certificate had expired.

   Control plane unresponsiveDeploys failing

   Root cause

   Certificate or credential expiry

   Component

   Kubernetes API serverkubelet

   Contributing factor

   Unknown limitNo alert on limit

   Detection

   KubeSpawner failed to create a container and logged an SSL certificate verification error.

   Remediation

   • checked certificate expiry with kubeadm alpha certs check-expiration
   • moved the old certificates and /etc/kubernetes/*.conf files to a backup directory
   • regenerated all certificates with kubeadm init phase certs all
   • regenerated the kubeconfig files with kubeadm init phase kubeconfig all
   • copied /etc/kubernetes/admin.conf to ~/.kube/config and restarted kubelet
   • restarted the kube-system containers with docker restart so they picked up the new credentials

   Lessons

   kubeadm clusters run on certificates that expire, and when the API server certificate expires kubectl cannot be used to fix it, so renewal has to happen on the control plane node with kubeadm. After renewal, the kubeconfig files and the running control plane containers must also pick up the new certificates, or kubectl returns Unauthorized.

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3. IL-0108 An Alcide admission controller applied to the production cluster during a workshop made create and update requests on Deployments time out

   DFDS2020

   Symptoms

   At 14:41 CET on 4 November 2020 users reported timeouts when deploying to Hellman, the production Kubernetes cluster. The timeouts were confirmed at 15:04.

   Deploys failingControl plane lag

   Trigger

   During an Alcide workshop that began at 13:00 CET, an Alcide admission controller was applied to the production cluster at 13:13 in the belief that it would not disrupt anything.

   Root cause

   Configuration change

   Component

   Admission webhookKubernetes API server

   Contributing factor

   No configuration testsUnverified assumptionMonitoring blind spot

   Detection

   Users reported timeouts when deploying to the Hellman cluster at 14:41 CET; the timeouts were verified at 15:04.

   Remediation

   • toggled the Alcide admission controller to verify that it caused the timeouts
   • permanently deleted the Alcide admission controller

   Action items

   • Monitor Kubernetes deployments for timeouts
   • Monitor 5xx status codes from the Kubernetes API server

   Lessons

   New components are applied in sandbox clusters, not in production. The team needs enough Alcide knowledge to maintain the component until it is fully deprecated.

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4. IL-0505 kubectl logs failed on GKE with "No SSH tunnels currently open" and mybinder.org build logs stopped reaching users

   Binder Project2019

   Symptoms

   On 20 February 2019 at 08:03 CET, `kubectl logs -f <pod>` stopped working for every pod in the mybinder.org cluster on GKE. Because pod logs could not be read, build logs were no longer forwarded to users, although the builds themselves ran normally.

   Monitoring outageDeploys failing

   Root cause

   Cloud provider outage

   Component

   GKE control planeKubernetes API server

   Contributing factor

   Limited debug access

   Remediation

   • Cordoned node gke-prod-a-users-b921bb88-rd5d so it would be removed from the pool once empty
   • Drained the node and removed it from the pool, after which kubectl logs worked again

   Action items

   • Test that kubectl logs works and notify when it does not
   • Add the command for retrieving API server logs to the SRE guide
   • Describe in the SRE guide how to identify suspicious node networking status

   Lessons

   The root cause was very difficult to identify, partly because it appears to sit in the Kubernetes master or the GKE service itself. Capturing `kubectl describe node` for the suspicious node would have allowed a comparison with healthy nodes, and a node that reports no ExternalIP or InternalIP in its status was likely a direct symptom of the problem and can be used as a diagnostic in the future.

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