Kubernetes Resource Limits Guide

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7 min read

Properly managing resources is crucial when working with Kubernetes in production environments. Without careful configuration of Kubernetes resource limits, you risk starving other workloads of necessary compute resources or wasting money on overprovisioned infrastructure. Finding the right balance is key to maintaining a healthy, cost-effective cluster. In this article, we dive into the essentials of setting resource requests and limits in Kubernetes to optimize your deployments.

Setting Resource Requests and Limits

To ensure your Kubernetes cluster remains stable and efficient, it's essential to define resource requests and limits for each container within a pod. Resource requests specify the minimum amount of CPU and memory a container needs to function properly, while limits set the maximum amount of resources a container can consume.

When configuring resource requests and limits, you'll need to consider the requirements of both the main application container and any sidecar containers that support it. The pod tracks the total resource requests and limits by summing the values for all its containers. This information is then used by the Kubernetes control plane to determine the best node for scheduling the pod.

CPU Resources

CPU resource requests and limits are measured in millicores (m). For example, if your container requires a full CPU core, you would set the value to "1000m". If it only needs a quarter of a core, you would use "250m". It's crucial to avoid requesting more CPU resources than the largest node in your cluster can provide. If you do, the pod will never be scheduled.

When a container exceeds its CPU limit, Kubernetes throttles the container instead of terminating it. This can lead to a slow-running application that is challenging to troubleshoot.

Memory Resources

Memory resource requests and limits are specified in bytes, with most people using mebibytes (Mi) or megabytes (M). As with CPU, requesting more memory than available on your nodes will prevent the pod from being scheduled.

Unlike CPU, when a container exceeds its memory limit, the pod may be terminated. If the pod is restartable, the kubelet will attempt to restart it. However, containers that consistently surpass their memory requests can cause the offending pod to be evicted when the node runs out of memory. Eviction occurs when a cluster is running low on memory or disk space, prompting kubelets to reclaim resources and terminate containers until usage falls below the eviction threshold.

By carefully setting resource requests and limits for your containers, you can maintain a well-balanced Kubernetes cluster that efficiently allocates resources and ensures optimal application performance.

Managing Resources with Namespaces, Quotas, and Limit Ranges

Kubernetes namespaces allow you to divide a cluster into multiple virtual clusters, which can be allocated to specific applications, services, or teams. This is particularly useful when multiple engineers or teams are working within the same large Kubernetes cluster. To ensure resources are efficiently allocated and not unnecessarily reserved, it's important to establish consistent resource requirement thresholds for each namespace using Resource Quotas and Limit Ranges.

Resource Quotas

Resource Quotas are used to reserve a fixed amount of compute resources for exclusive use within a single namespace. This guarantees that the resources are available for the intended purpose and prevents over-commitment. However, it's essential to strike a balance when defining Resource Quotas, as overly generous quotas can lead to increased infrastructure costs, while under-committed quotas may degrade application performance.

In addition to limiting compute resources, Resource Quotas can also be used to restrict the number of objects created by type or by resource consumption within a namespace. For example, you can set a hard limit on the number of pods allowed in a namespace. Once this limit is reached, any further attempts to create pods within that namespace will fail until resources are freed up.

Limit Ranges

While Resource Quotas control resource consumption at the namespace level, objects within the namespace can still consume all available resources, potentially starving out other objects. Limit Ranges address this issue by setting minimum and maximum limits on CPU, RAM, and storage requests per Persistent Volume Claim (PVC) at the object level within a namespace.

For instance, you can define a Limit Range that sets a maximum memory limit of 1GB and a minimum of 500MB for containers within a namespace. If a pod is created with a container that exceeds the maximum memory limit or falls below the minimum memory request, the pod creation will fail, and an error message will be displayed.

By utilizing Limit Ranges in conjunction with Resource Quotas, you can effectively manage resource allocation and consumption within your Kubernetes cluster, ensuring that resources are fairly distributed among objects and namespaces while preventing any single object from monopolizing available resources.

Implementing Resource Quotas and Limit Ranges requires careful planning and monitoring to maintain optimal cluster performance and cost-efficiency. Regularly reviewing and adjusting these settings based on actual usage patterns and changing requirements is crucial for the long-term success of your Kubernetes deployments.

Addressing Common Kubernetes Resource Management Challenges

While Kubernetes provides powerful tools for managing resources, such as Resource Quotas and Limit Ranges, there are still common challenges that administrators face when optimizing cluster performance and cost-efficiency. Two significant issues are resource under- and over-commitments and the difficulty of generating accurate chargeback and utilization reports for individual application owners on shared clusters.

Preventing Resource Under- and Over-Commitments

Resource under- and over-commitments can lead to a variety of problems, from application crashes due to insufficient memory to wasted spending on underutilized infrastructure. One way to mitigate these issues is by leveraging Kubernetes pod priority and preemption.

Pod priority allows you to define the relative importance of pods within your cluster. When a higher-priority pod cannot be scheduled due to resource constraints, the Kubernetes scheduler will attempt to preempt (evict) lower-priority pods to free up the necessary resources. This ensures that critical workloads are prioritized and helps prevent application outages caused by resource contention.

To use pod priorities, create a PriorityClass object and assign it to your pods using the priorityClassName field in the pod specification. You can also disable preemption for high-priority pods by setting the preemptionPolicy to "Never" in the PriorityClass definition.

Generating Chargeback and Utilization Reports

In a shared Kubernetes cluster with hundreds or thousands of pods and other resources, it can be challenging to generate accurate chargeback and utilization reports for individual application owners. One approach to simplify this process is to use labels that represent your cost centers.

Labels are key-value pairs that you can assign to Kubernetes objects, such as pods and namespaces. By applying labels strategically, you can build a logical, hierarchical organization of objects and perform bulk operations on subsets of objects. For example, you might label pods with their associated environment (e.g., staging or production) and team (e.g., infrastructure or application).

In addition to labels, you can use annotations on containers to provide more detailed information. However, unlike labels, annotations cannot be used to select and identify objects.

Another approach to generating chargeback and utilization reports is to align your application workloads with the appropriate computing resource pools. For example, if your cluster is hosted on a major cloud platform and was deployed using tools like kOps, you can leverage CloudLabels and NodeLabels to group resources based on their purpose or ownership.

By implementing a consistent labeling strategy and aligning workloads with resource pools, you can more easily generate accurate chargeback and utilization reports, enabling better cost allocation and resource optimization decisions.

Conclusion

Effective resource management is essential for maintaining a healthy, cost-efficient Kubernetes cluster. By understanding and implementing resource requests and limits, you can ensure that your applications have the necessary resources to function properly while preventing any single workload from monopolizing cluster resources.

Utilizing Kubernetes namespaces, Resource Quotas, and Limit Ranges allows you to divide your cluster into virtual clusters, allocate resources to specific applications or teams, and enforce consistent resource requirement thresholds. This helps to prevent resource under- and over-commitments, which can lead to application performance issues and wasted spending.

To further optimize your cluster, consider leveraging pod priority and preemption to ensure that critical workloads are prioritized during resource contention. Additionally, implementing a consistent labeling strategy and aligning workloads with appropriate resource pools can simplify the process of generating accurate chargeback and utilization reports.

As your Kubernetes deployments grow in complexity, regularly monitoring and adjusting your resource management settings based on actual usage patterns and evolving requirements becomes increasingly important. By staying proactive and adapting your resource management strategies as needed, you can maintain a high-performing, cost-effective Kubernetes cluster that meets the needs of your applications and users.