Chapter 13. Pruning objects to reclaim resources
Over time, API objects created in OpenShift Container Platform can accumulate in the cluster’s etcd data store through normal user operations, such as when building and deploying applications.
Cluster administrators can periodically prune older versions of objects from the cluster that are no longer required. For example, by pruning images you can delete older images and layers that are no longer in use, but are still taking up disk space.
13.1. Basic pruning operations
The CLI groups prune operations under a common parent command:
$ oc adm prune <object_type> <options>
This specifies:
-
The
<object_type>
to perform the action on, such asgroups
,builds
,deployments
, orimages
. -
The
<options>
supported to prune that object type.
13.2. Pruning groups
To prune groups records from an external provider, administrators can run the following command:
$ oc adm prune groups \ --sync-config=path/to/sync/config [<options>]
Options | Description |
---|---|
| Indicate that pruning should occur, instead of performing a dry-run. |
| Path to the group blacklist file. |
| Path to the group whitelist file. |
| Path to the synchronization configuration file. |
Procedure
To see the groups that the prune command deletes, run the following command:
$ oc adm prune groups --sync-config=ldap-sync-config.yaml
To perform the prune operation, add the
--confirm
flag:$ oc adm prune groups --sync-config=ldap-sync-config.yaml --confirm
13.3. Pruning deployment resources
You can prune resources associated with deployments that are no longer required by the system, due to age and status.
The following command prunes replication controllers associated with DeploymentConfig
objects:
$ oc adm prune deployments [<options>]
To also prune replica sets associated with Deployment
objects, use the --replica-sets
flag. This flag is currently a Technology Preview feature.
Option | Description |
---|---|
| Indicate that pruning should occur, instead of performing a dry-run. |
|
Per the |
|
Per the |
|
Do not prune any replication controller that is younger than |
|
Prune all replication controllers that no longer have a |
|
If Important This flag is a Technology Preview feature. |
Procedure
To see what a pruning operation would delete, run the following command:
$ oc adm prune deployments --orphans --keep-complete=5 --keep-failed=1 \ --keep-younger-than=60m
To actually perform the prune operation, add the
--confirm
flag:$ oc adm prune deployments --orphans --keep-complete=5 --keep-failed=1 \ --keep-younger-than=60m --confirm
13.4. Pruning builds
To prune builds that are no longer required by the system due to age and status, administrators can run the following command:
$ oc adm prune builds [<options>]
Option | Description |
---|---|
| Indicate that pruning should occur, instead of performing a dry-run. |
| Prune all builds whose build configuration no longer exists, status is complete, failed, error, or canceled. |
|
Per build configuration, keep the last |
|
Per build configuration, keep the last |
|
Do not prune any object that is younger than |
Procedure
To see what a pruning operation would delete, run the following command:
$ oc adm prune builds --orphans --keep-complete=5 --keep-failed=1 \ --keep-younger-than=60m
To actually perform the prune operation, add the
--confirm
flag:$ oc adm prune builds --orphans --keep-complete=5 --keep-failed=1 \ --keep-younger-than=60m --confirm
Developers can enable automatic build pruning by modifying their build configuration.
Additional resources
13.5. Automatically pruning images
Images from the OpenShift image registry that are no longer required by the system due to age, status, or exceed limits are automatically pruned. Cluster administrators can configure the Pruning Custom Resource, or suspend it.
Prerequisites
- You have access to an OpenShift Container Platform cluster using an account with cluster administrator permissions.
-
Install the
oc
CLI.
Procedure
-
Verify that the object named
imagepruners.imageregistry.operator.openshift.io/cluster
contains the followingspec
andstatus
fields:
spec: schedule: 0 0 * * * 1 suspend: false 2 keepTagRevisions: 3 3 keepYoungerThanDuration: 60m 4 keepYoungerThan: 3600000000000 5 resources: {} 6 affinity: {} 7 nodeSelector: {} 8 tolerations: [] 9 successfulJobsHistoryLimit: 3 10 failedJobsHistoryLimit: 3 11 status: observedGeneration: 2 12 conditions: 13 - type: Available status: "True" lastTransitionTime: 2019-10-09T03:13:45 reason: Ready message: "Periodic image pruner has been created." - type: Scheduled status: "True" lastTransitionTime: 2019-10-09T03:13:45 reason: Scheduled message: "Image pruner job has been scheduled." - type: Failed staus: "False" lastTransitionTime: 2019-10-09T03:13:45 reason: Succeeded message: "Most recent image pruning job succeeded."
- 1
schedule
:CronJob
formatted schedule. This is an optional field, default is daily at midnight.- 2
suspend
: If set totrue
, theCronJob
running pruning is suspended. This is an optional field, default isfalse
. The initial value on new clusters isfalse
.- 3
keepTagRevisions
: The number of revisions per tag to keep. This is an optional field, default is3
. The initial value is3
.- 4
keepYoungerThanDuration
: Retain images younger than this duration. This is an optional field. If a value is not specified, eitherkeepYoungerThan
or the default value60m
(60 minutes) is used.- 5
keepYoungerThan
: Deprecated. The same askeepYoungerThanDuration
, but the duration is specified as an integer in nanoseconds. This is an optional field. WhenkeepYoungerThanDuration
is set, this field is ignored.- 6
resources
: Standard pod resource requests and limits. This is an optional field.- 7
affinity
: Standard pod affinity. This is an optional field.- 8
nodeSelector
: Standard pod node selector. This is an optional field.- 9
tolerations
: Standard pod tolerations. This is an optional field.- 10
successfulJobsHistoryLimit
: The maximum number of successful jobs to retain. Must be>= 1
to ensure metrics are reported. This is an optional field, default is3
. The initial value is3
.- 11
failedJobsHistoryLimit
: The maximum number of failed jobs to retain. Must be>= 1
to ensure metrics are reported. This is an optional field, default is3
. The initial value is3
.- 12
observedGeneration
: The generation observed by the Operator.- 13
conditions
: The standard condition objects with the following types:-
Available
: Indicates if the pruning job has been created. Reasons can be Ready or Error. -
Scheduled
: Indicates if the next pruning job has been scheduled. Reasons can be Scheduled, Suspended, or Error. -
Failed
: Indicates if the most recent pruning job failed.
-
The Image Registry Operator’s behavior for managing the pruner is orthogonal to the managementState
specified on the Image Registry Operator’s ClusterOperator
object. If the Image Registry Operator is not in the Managed
state, the image pruner can still be configured and managed by the Pruning Custom Resource.
However, the managementState
of the Image Registry Operator alters the behavior of the deployed image pruner job:
-
Managed
: the--prune-registry
flag for the image pruner is set totrue
. -
Removed
: the--prune-registry
flag for the image pruner is set tofalse
, meaning it only prunes image metadata in etcd.
13.6. Manually pruning images
The pruning custom resource enables automatic image pruning for the images from the OpenShift image registry. However, administrators can manually prune images that are no longer required by the system due to age, status, or exceed limits. There are two methods to manually prune images:
-
Running image pruning as a
Job
orCronJob
on the cluster. -
Running the
oc adm prune images
command.
Prerequisites
-
To prune images, you must first log in to the CLI as a user with an access token. The user must also have the
system:image-pruner
cluster role or greater (for example,cluster-admin
). - Expose the image registry.
Procedure
To manually prune images that are no longer required by the system due to age, status, or exceed limits, use one of the following methods:
Run image pruning as a
Job
orCronJob
on the cluster by creating a YAML file for thepruner
service account, for example:$ oc create -f <filename>.yaml
Example output
kind: List apiVersion: v1 items: - apiVersion: v1 kind: ServiceAccount metadata: name: pruner namespace: openshift-image-registry - apiVersion: rbac.authorization.k8s.io/v1 kind: ClusterRoleBinding metadata: name: openshift-image-registry-pruner roleRef: apiGroup: rbac.authorization.k8s.io kind: ClusterRole name: system:image-pruner subjects: - kind: ServiceAccount name: pruner namespace: openshift-image-registry - apiVersion: batch/v1 kind: CronJob metadata: name: image-pruner namespace: openshift-image-registry spec: schedule: "0 0 * * *" concurrencyPolicy: Forbid successfulJobsHistoryLimit: 1 failedJobsHistoryLimit: 3 jobTemplate: spec: template: spec: restartPolicy: OnFailure containers: - image: "quay.io/openshift/origin-cli:4.1" resources: requests: cpu: 1 memory: 1Gi terminationMessagePolicy: FallbackToLogsOnError command: - oc args: - adm - prune - images - --certificate-authority=/var/run/secrets/kubernetes.io/serviceaccount/service-ca.crt - --keep-tag-revisions=5 - --keep-younger-than=96h - --confirm=true name: image-pruner serviceAccountName: pruner
Run the
oc adm prune images [<options>]
command:$ oc adm prune images [<options>]
Pruning images removes data from the integrated registry unless
--prune-registry=false
is used.Pruning images with the
--namespace
flag does not remove images, only image streams. Images are non-namespaced resources. Therefore, limiting pruning to a particular namespace makes it impossible to calculate its current usage.By default, the integrated registry caches metadata of blobs to reduce the number of requests to storage, and to increase the request-processing speed. Pruning does not update the integrated registry cache. Images that still contain pruned layers after pruning will be broken because the pruned layers that have metadata in the cache will not be pushed. Therefore, you must redeploy the registry to clear the cache after pruning:
$ oc rollout restart deployment/image-registry -n openshift-image-registry
If the integrated registry uses a Redis cache, you must clean the database manually.
If redeploying the registry after pruning is not an option, then you must permanently disable the cache.
oc adm prune images
operations require a route for your registry. Registry routes are not created by default.The Prune images CLI configuration options table describes the options you can use with the
oc adm prune images <options>
command.Table 13.4. Prune images CLI configuration options Option Description --all
Include images that were not pushed to the registry, but have been mirrored by pullthrough. This is on by default. To limit the pruning to images that were pushed to the integrated registry, pass
--all=false
.--certificate-authority
The path to a certificate authority file to use when communicating with the OpenShift Container Platform-managed registries. Defaults to the certificate authority data from the current user’s configuration file. If provided, a secure connection is initiated.
--confirm
Indicate that pruning should occur, instead of performing a test-run. This requires a valid route to the integrated container image registry. If this command is run outside of the cluster network, the route must be provided using
--registry-url
.--force-insecure
Use caution with this option. Allow an insecure connection to the container registry that is hosted via HTTP or has an invalid HTTPS certificate.
--keep-tag-revisions=<N>
For each imagestream, keep up to at most
N
image revisions per tag (default3
).--keep-younger-than=<duration>
Do not prune any image that is younger than
<duration>
relative to the current time. Alternately, do not prune any image that is referenced by any other object that is younger than<duration>
relative to the current time (default60m
).--prune-over-size-limit
Prune each image that exceeds the smallest limit defined in the same project. This flag cannot be combined with
--keep-tag-revisions
nor--keep-younger-than
.--registry-url
The address to use when contacting the registry. The command attempts to use a cluster-internal URL determined from managed images and image streams. In case it fails (the registry cannot be resolved or reached), an alternative route that works needs to be provided using this flag. The registry hostname can be prefixed by
https://
orhttp://
, which enforces particular connection protocol.--prune-registry
In conjunction with the conditions stipulated by the other options, this option controls whether the data in the registry corresponding to the OpenShift Container Platform image API object is pruned. By default, image pruning processes both the image API objects and corresponding data in the registry.
This option is useful when you are only concerned with removing etcd content, to reduce the number of image objects but are not concerned with cleaning up registry storage, or if you intend to do that separately by hard pruning the registry during an appropriate maintenance window for the registry.
13.6.1. Image prune conditions
You can apply conditions to your manually pruned images.
To remove any image managed by OpenShift Container Platform, or images with the annotation
openshift.io/image.managed
:Created at least
--keep-younger-than
minutes ago and are not currently referenced by any:-
Pods created less than
--keep-younger-than
minutes ago -
Image streams created less than
--keep-younger-than
minutes ago - Running pods
- Pending pods
- Replication controllers
- Deployments
- Deployment configs
- Replica sets
- Build configurations
- Builds
- Jobs
- Cronjobs
- Stateful sets
-
--keep-tag-revisions
most recent items instream.status.tags[].items
-
Pods created less than
That are exceeding the smallest limit defined in the same project and are not currently referenced by any:
- Running pods
- Pending pods
- Replication controllers
- Deployments
- Deployment configs
- Replica sets
- Build configurations
- Builds
- Jobs
- Cronjobs
- Stateful sets
- There is no support for pruning from external registries.
-
When an image is pruned, all references to the image are removed from all image streams that have a reference to the image in
status.tags
. - Image layers that are no longer referenced by any images are removed.
The --prune-over-size-limit
flag cannot be combined with the --keep-tag-revisions
flag nor the --keep-younger-than
flags. Doing so returns information that this operation is not allowed.
Separating the removal of OpenShift Container Platform image API objects and image data from the registry by using --prune-registry=false
, followed by hard pruning the registry, can narrow timing windows and is safer when compared to trying to prune both through one command. However, timing windows are not completely removed.
For example, you can still create a pod referencing an image as pruning identifies that image for pruning. You should still keep track of an API object created during the pruning operations that might reference images so that you can mitigate any references to deleted content.
Re-doing the pruning without the --prune-registry
option or with --prune-registry=true
does not lead to pruning the associated storage in the image registry for images previously pruned by --prune-registry=false
. Any images that were pruned with --prune-registry=false
can only be deleted from registry storage by hard pruning the registry.
13.6.2. Running the image prune operation
Procedure
To see what a pruning operation would delete:
Keeping up to three tag revisions, and keeping resources (images, image streams, and pods) younger than 60 minutes:
$ oc adm prune images --keep-tag-revisions=3 --keep-younger-than=60m
Pruning every image that exceeds defined limits:
$ oc adm prune images --prune-over-size-limit
To perform the prune operation with the options from the previous step:
$ oc adm prune images --keep-tag-revisions=3 --keep-younger-than=60m --confirm
$ oc adm prune images --prune-over-size-limit --confirm
13.6.3. Using secure or insecure connections
The secure connection is the preferred and recommended approach. It is done over HTTPS protocol with a mandatory certificate verification. The prune
command always attempts to use it if possible. If it is not possible, in some cases it can fall-back to insecure connection, which is dangerous. In this case, either certificate verification is skipped or plain HTTP protocol is used.
The fall-back to insecure connection is allowed in the following cases unless --certificate-authority
is specified:
-
The
prune
command is run with the--force-insecure
option. -
The provided
registry-url
is prefixed with thehttp://
scheme. -
The provided
registry-url
is a local-link address orlocalhost
. -
The configuration of the current user allows for an insecure connection. This can be caused by the user either logging in using
--insecure-skip-tls-verify
or choosing the insecure connection when prompted.
If the registry is secured by a certificate authority different from the one used by OpenShift Container Platform, it must be specified using the --certificate-authority
flag. Otherwise, the prune
command fails with an error.
13.6.4. Image pruning problems
Images not being pruned
If your images keep accumulating and the prune
command removes just a small portion of what you expect, ensure that you understand the image prune conditions that must apply for an image to be considered a candidate for pruning.
Ensure that images you want removed occur at higher positions in each tag history than your chosen tag revisions threshold. For example, consider an old and obsolete image named sha256:abz
. By running the following command in your namespace, where the image is tagged, the image is tagged three times in a single image stream named myapp
:
$ oc get is -n <namespace> -o go-template='{{range $isi, $is := .items}}{{range $ti, $tag := $is.status.tags}}'\ '{{range $ii, $item := $tag.items}}{{if eq $item.image "sha256:<hash>"}}{{$is.metadata.name}}:{{$tag.tag}} at position {{$ii}} out of {{len $tag.items}}\n'\ '{{end}}{{end}}{{end}}{{end}}'
Example output
myapp:v2 at position 4 out of 5 myapp:v2.1 at position 2 out of 2 myapp:v2.1-may-2016 at position 0 out of 1
When default options are used, the image is never pruned because it occurs at position 0
in a history of myapp:v2.1-may-2016
tag. For an image to be considered for pruning, the administrator must either:
Specify
--keep-tag-revisions=0
with theoc adm prune images
command.WarningThis action removes all the tags from all the namespaces with underlying images, unless they are younger or they are referenced by objects younger than the specified threshold.
-
Delete all the
istags
where the position is below the revision threshold, which meansmyapp:v2.1
andmyapp:v2.1-may-2016
. -
Move the image further in the history, either by running new builds pushing to the same
istag
, or by tagging other image. This is not always desirable for old release tags.
Tags having a date or time of a particular image’s build in their names should be avoided, unless the image must be preserved for an undefined amount of time. Such tags tend to have just one image in their history, which prevents them from ever being pruned.
Using a secure connection against insecure registry
If you see a message similar to the following in the output of the oc adm prune images
command, then your registry is not secured and the oc adm prune images
client attempts to use a secure connection:
error: error communicating with registry: Get https://172.30.30.30:5000/healthz: http: server gave HTTP response to HTTPS client
-
The recommended solution is to secure the registry. Otherwise, you can force the client to use an insecure connection by appending
--force-insecure
to the command; however, this is not recommended.
Using an insecure connection against a secured registry
If you see one of the following errors in the output of the oc adm prune images
command, it means that your registry is secured using a certificate signed by a certificate authority other than the one used by oc adm prune images
client for connection verification:
error: error communicating with registry: Get http://172.30.30.30:5000/healthz: malformed HTTP response "\x15\x03\x01\x00\x02\x02" error: error communicating with registry: [Get https://172.30.30.30:5000/healthz: x509: certificate signed by unknown authority, Get http://172.30.30.30:5000/healthz: malformed HTTP response "\x15\x03\x01\x00\x02\x02"]
By default, the certificate authority data stored in the user’s configuration files is used; the same is true for communication with the master API.
Use the --certificate-authority
option to provide the right certificate authority for the container image registry server.
Using the wrong certificate authority
The following error means that the certificate authority used to sign the certificate of the secured container image registry is different from the authority used by the client:
error: error communicating with registry: Get https://172.30.30.30:5000/: x509: certificate signed by unknown authority
Make sure to provide the right one with the flag --certificate-authority
.
As a workaround, the --force-insecure
flag can be added instead. However, this is not recommended.
Additional resources
- Accessing the registry
- Exposing the registry
- See Image Registry Operator in OpenShift Container Platform for information on how to create a registry route.
13.7. Hard pruning the registry
The OpenShift Container Registry can accumulate blobs that are not referenced by the OpenShift Container Platform cluster’s etcd. The basic pruning images procedure, therefore, is unable to operate on them. These are called orphaned blobs.
Orphaned blobs can occur from the following scenarios:
-
Manually deleting an image with
oc delete image <sha256:image-id>
command, which only removes the image from etcd, but not from the registry’s storage. - Pushing to the registry initiated by daemon failures, which causes some blobs to get uploaded, but the image manifest (which is uploaded as the very last component) does not. All unique image blobs become orphans.
- OpenShift Container Platform refusing an image because of quota restrictions.
- The standard image pruner deleting an image manifest, but is interrupted before it deletes the related blobs.
- A bug in the registry pruner, which fails to remove the intended blobs, causing the image objects referencing them to be removed and the blobs becoming orphans.
Hard pruning the registry, a separate procedure from basic image pruning, allows cluster administrators to remove orphaned blobs. You should hard prune if you are running out of storage space in your OpenShift Container Registry and believe you have orphaned blobs.
This should be an infrequent operation and is necessary only when you have evidence that significant numbers of new orphans have been created. Otherwise, you can perform standard image pruning at regular intervals, for example, once a day (depending on the number of images being created).
Procedure
To hard prune orphaned blobs from the registry:
Log in.
Log in to the cluster with the CLI as
kubeadmin
or another privileged user that has access to theopenshift-image-registry
namespace.Run a basic image prune.
Basic image pruning removes additional images that are no longer needed. The hard prune does not remove images on its own. It only removes blobs stored in the registry storage. Therefore, you should run this just before the hard prune.
Switch the registry to read-only mode.
If the registry is not running in read-only mode, any pushes happening at the same time as the prune will either:
- fail and cause new orphans, or
- succeed although the images cannot be pulled (because some of the referenced blobs were deleted).
Pushes will not succeed until the registry is switched back to read-write mode. Therefore, the hard prune must be carefully scheduled.
To switch the registry to read-only mode:
In
configs.imageregistry.operator.openshift.io/cluster
, setspec.readOnly
totrue
:$ oc patch configs.imageregistry.operator.openshift.io/cluster -p '{"spec":{"readOnly":true}}' --type=merge
Add the
system:image-pruner
role.The service account used to run the registry instances requires additional permissions to list some resources.
Get the service account name:
$ service_account=$(oc get -n openshift-image-registry \ -o jsonpath='{.spec.template.spec.serviceAccountName}' deploy/image-registry)
Add the
system:image-pruner
cluster role to the service account:$ oc adm policy add-cluster-role-to-user \ system:image-pruner -z \ ${service_account} -n openshift-image-registry
Optional: Run the pruner in dry-run mode.
To see how many blobs would be removed, run the hard pruner in dry-run mode. No changes are actually made. The following example references an image registry pod called
image-registry-3-vhndw
:$ oc -n openshift-image-registry exec pod/image-registry-3-vhndw -- /bin/sh -c '/usr/bin/dockerregistry -prune=check'
Alternatively, to get the exact paths for the prune candidates, increase the logging level:
$ oc -n openshift-image-registry exec pod/image-registry-3-vhndw -- /bin/sh -c 'REGISTRY_LOG_LEVEL=info /usr/bin/dockerregistry -prune=check'
Example output
time="2017-06-22T11:50:25.066156047Z" level=info msg="start prune (dry-run mode)" distribution_version="v2.4.1+unknown" kubernetes_version=v1.6.1+$Format:%h$ openshift_version=unknown time="2017-06-22T11:50:25.092257421Z" level=info msg="Would delete blob: sha256:00043a2a5e384f6b59ab17e2c3d3a3d0a7de01b2cabeb606243e468acc663fa5" go.version=go1.7.5 instance.id=b097121c-a864-4e0c-ad6c-cc25f8fdf5a6 time="2017-06-22T11:50:25.092395621Z" level=info msg="Would delete blob: sha256:0022d49612807cb348cabc562c072ef34d756adfe0100a61952cbcb87ee6578a" go.version=go1.7.5 instance.id=b097121c-a864-4e0c-ad6c-cc25f8fdf5a6 time="2017-06-22T11:50:25.092492183Z" level=info msg="Would delete blob: sha256:0029dd4228961086707e53b881e25eba0564fa80033fbbb2e27847a28d16a37c" go.version=go1.7.5 instance.id=b097121c-a864-4e0c-ad6c-cc25f8fdf5a6 time="2017-06-22T11:50:26.673946639Z" level=info msg="Would delete blob: sha256:ff7664dfc213d6cc60fd5c5f5bb00a7bf4a687e18e1df12d349a1d07b2cf7663" go.version=go1.7.5 instance.id=b097121c-a864-4e0c-ad6c-cc25f8fdf5a6 time="2017-06-22T11:50:26.674024531Z" level=info msg="Would delete blob: sha256:ff7a933178ccd931f4b5f40f9f19a65be5eeeec207e4fad2a5bafd28afbef57e" go.version=go1.7.5 instance.id=b097121c-a864-4e0c-ad6c-cc25f8fdf5a6 time="2017-06-22T11:50:26.674675469Z" level=info msg="Would delete blob: sha256:ff9b8956794b426cc80bb49a604a0b24a1553aae96b930c6919a6675db3d5e06" go.version=go1.7.5 instance.id=b097121c-a864-4e0c-ad6c-cc25f8fdf5a6 ... Would delete 13374 blobs Would free up 2.835 GiB of disk space Use -prune=delete to actually delete the data
Run the hard prune.
Execute the following command inside one running instance of a
image-registry
pod to run the hard prune. The following example references an image registry pod calledimage-registry-3-vhndw
:$ oc -n openshift-image-registry exec pod/image-registry-3-vhndw -- /bin/sh -c '/usr/bin/dockerregistry -prune=delete'
Example output
Deleted 13374 blobs Freed up 2.835 GiB of disk space
Switch the registry back to read-write mode.
After the prune is finished, the registry can be switched back to read-write mode. In
configs.imageregistry.operator.openshift.io/cluster
, setspec.readOnly
tofalse
:$ oc patch configs.imageregistry.operator.openshift.io/cluster -p '{"spec":{"readOnly":false}}' --type=merge
13.8. Pruning cron jobs
Cron jobs can perform pruning of successful jobs, but might not properly handle failed jobs. Therefore, the cluster administrator should perform regular cleanup of jobs manually. They should also restrict the access to cron jobs to a small group of trusted users and set appropriate quota to prevent the cron job from creating too many jobs and pods.