Chapter 6. Working with nodes

You can get detailed information on the nodes in the cluster.

Name:               node1.example.com 1
Roles:              worker 2
Labels:             kubernetes.io/os=linux
                    kubernetes.io/hostname=ip-10-0-131-14
                    kubernetes.io/arch=amd64 3
                    node-role.kubernetes.io/worker=
                    node.kubernetes.io/instance-type=m4.large
                    node.openshift.io/os_id=rhcos
                    node.openshift.io/os_version=4.5
                    region=east
                    topology.kubernetes.io/region=us-east-1
                    topology.kubernetes.io/zone=us-east-1a
Annotations:        cluster.k8s.io/machine: openshift-machine-api/ahardin-worker-us-east-2a-q5dzc  4
                    machineconfiguration.openshift.io/currentConfig: worker-309c228e8b3a92e2235edd544c62fea8
                    machineconfiguration.openshift.io/desiredConfig: worker-309c228e8b3a92e2235edd544c62fea8
                    machineconfiguration.openshift.io/state: Done
                    volumes.kubernetes.io/controller-managed-attach-detach: true
CreationTimestamp:  Wed, 13 Feb 2019 11:05:57 -0500
Taints:             <none>  5
Unschedulable:      false
Conditions:                 6
  Type             Status  LastHeartbeatTime                 LastTransitionTime                Reason                       Message
  ----             ------  -----------------                 ------------------                ------                       -------
  OutOfDisk        False   Wed, 13 Feb 2019 15:09:42 -0500   Wed, 13 Feb 2019 11:05:57 -0500   KubeletHasSufficientDisk     kubelet has sufficient disk space available
  MemoryPressure   False   Wed, 13 Feb 2019 15:09:42 -0500   Wed, 13 Feb 2019 11:05:57 -0500   KubeletHasSufficientMemory   kubelet has sufficient memory available
  DiskPressure     False   Wed, 13 Feb 2019 15:09:42 -0500   Wed, 13 Feb 2019 11:05:57 -0500   KubeletHasNoDiskPressure     kubelet has no disk pressure
  PIDPressure      False   Wed, 13 Feb 2019 15:09:42 -0500   Wed, 13 Feb 2019 11:05:57 -0500   KubeletHasSufficientPID      kubelet has sufficient PID available
  Ready            True    Wed, 13 Feb 2019 15:09:42 -0500   Wed, 13 Feb 2019 11:07:09 -0500   KubeletReady                 kubelet is posting ready status
Addresses:   7
  InternalIP:   10.0.140.16
  InternalDNS:  ip-10-0-140-16.us-east-2.compute.internal
  Hostname:     ip-10-0-140-16.us-east-2.compute.internal
Capacity:    8
 attachable-volumes-aws-ebs:  39
 cpu:                         2
 hugepages-1Gi:               0
 hugepages-2Mi:               0
 memory:                      8172516Ki
 pods:                        250
Allocatable:
 attachable-volumes-aws-ebs:  39
 cpu:                         1500m
 hugepages-1Gi:               0
 hugepages-2Mi:               0
 memory:                      7558116Ki
 pods:                        250
System Info:    9
 Machine ID:                              63787c9534c24fde9a0cde35c13f1f66
 System UUID:                             EC22BF97-A006-4A58-6AF8-0A38DEEA122A
 Boot ID:                                 f24ad37d-2594-46b4-8830-7f7555918325
 Kernel Version:                          3.10.0-957.5.1.el7.x86_64
 OS Image:                                Red Hat Enterprise Linux CoreOS 410.8.20190520.0 (Ootpa)
 Operating System:                        linux
 Architecture:                            amd64
 Container Runtime Version:               cri-o://1.30.3-0.6.dev.rhaos4.3.git9ad059b.el8-rc2
 Kubelet Version:                         v1.30.3
 Kube-Proxy Version:                      v1.30.3
PodCIDR:                                  10.128.4.0/24
ProviderID:                               aws:///us-east-2a/i-04e87b31dc6b3e171
Non-terminated Pods:                      (12 in total)  10
  Namespace                               Name                                   CPU Requests  CPU Limits  Memory Requests  Memory Limits
  ---------                               ----                                   ------------  ----------  ---------------  -------------
  openshift-cluster-node-tuning-operator  tuned-hdl5q                            0 (0%)        0 (0%)      0 (0%)           0 (0%)
  openshift-dns                           dns-default-l69zr                      0 (0%)        0 (0%)      0 (0%)           0 (0%)
  openshift-image-registry                node-ca-9hmcg                          0 (0%)        0 (0%)      0 (0%)           0 (0%)
  openshift-ingress                       router-default-76455c45c-c5ptv         0 (0%)        0 (0%)      0 (0%)           0 (0%)
  openshift-machine-config-operator       machine-config-daemon-cvqw9            20m (1%)      0 (0%)      50Mi (0%)        0 (0%)
  openshift-marketplace                   community-operators-f67fh              0 (0%)        0 (0%)      0 (0%)           0 (0%)
  openshift-monitoring                    alertmanager-main-0                    50m (3%)      50m (3%)    210Mi (2%)       10Mi (0%)
  openshift-monitoring                    node-exporter-l7q8d                    10m (0%)      20m (1%)    20Mi (0%)        40Mi (0%)
  openshift-monitoring                    prometheus-adapter-75d769c874-hvb85    0 (0%)        0 (0%)      0 (0%)           0 (0%)
  openshift-multus                        multus-kw8w5                           0 (0%)        0 (0%)      0 (0%)           0 (0%)
  openshift-ovn-kubernetes                          ovnkube-node-t4dsn                              80m (0%)     0 (0%)      1630Mi (0%)       0 (0%)
Allocated resources:
  (Total limits may be over 100 percent, i.e., overcommitted.)
  Resource                    Requests     Limits
  --------                    --------     ------
  cpu                         380m (25%)   270m (18%)
  memory                      880Mi (11%)  250Mi (3%)
  attachable-volumes-aws-ebs  0            0
Events:     11
  Type     Reason                   Age                From                      Message
  ----     ------                   ----               ----                      -------
  Normal   NodeHasSufficientPID     6d (x5 over 6d)    kubelet, m01.example.com  Node m01.example.com status is now: NodeHasSufficientPID
  Normal   NodeAllocatableEnforced  6d                 kubelet, m01.example.com  Updated Node Allocatable limit across pods
  Normal   NodeHasSufficientMemory  6d (x6 over 6d)    kubelet, m01.example.com  Node m01.example.com status is now: NodeHasSufficientMemory
  Normal   NodeHasNoDiskPressure    6d (x6 over 6d)    kubelet, m01.example.com  Node m01.example.com status is now: NodeHasNoDiskPressure
  Normal   NodeHasSufficientDisk    6d (x6 over 6d)    kubelet, m01.example.com  Node m01.example.com status is now: NodeHasSufficientDisk
  Normal   NodeHasSufficientPID     6d                 kubelet, m01.example.com  Node m01.example.com status is now: NodeHasSufficientPID
  Normal   Starting                 6d                 kubelet, m01.example.com  Starting kubelet.
#...

Among the information shown for nodes, the following node conditions appear in the output of the commands shown in this section:

You can list all the pods on a specific node.

You can display usage statistics about nodes, which provide the runtime environments for containers. These usage statistics include CPU, memory, and storage consumption.

Evacuating pods allows you to migrate all or selected pods from a given node or nodes.

You can only evacuate pods backed by a replication controller. The replication controller creates new pods on other nodes and removes the existing pods from the specified node(s).

Bare pods, meaning those not backed by a replication controller, are unaffected by default. You can evacuate a subset of pods by specifying a pod-selector. Pod selectors are based on labels, so all the pods with the specified label will be evacuated.

Use this process to access an example Node Tuning Operator specification.

The default CR is meant for delivering standard node-level tuning for the Red Hat OpenShift Service on AWS platform and it can only be modified to set the Operator Management state. Any other custom changes to the default CR will be overwritten by the Operator. For custom tuning, create your own Tuned CRs. Newly created CRs will be combined with the default CR and custom tuning applied to Red Hat OpenShift Service on AWS nodes based on node or pod labels and profile priorities.

The custom resource (CR) for the Operator has two major sections. The first section, profile:, is a list of TuneD profiles and their names. The second, recommend:, defines the profile selection logic.

Multiple custom tuning specifications can co-exist as multiple CRs in the Operator’s namespace. The existence of new CRs or the deletion of old CRs is detected by the Operator. All existing custom tuning specifications are merged and appropriate objects for the containerized TuneD daemons are updated.

Management state

The Operator Management state is set by adjusting the default Tuned CR. By default, the Operator is in the Managed state and the spec.managementState field is not present in the default Tuned CR. Valid values for the Operator Management state are as follows:

Profile data

The profile: section lists TuneD profiles and their names.

profile:
- name: tuned_profile_1
  data: |
    # TuneD profile specification
    [main]
    summary=Description of tuned_profile_1 profile

    [sysctl]
    net.ipv4.ip_forward=1
    # ... other sysctl's or other TuneD daemon plugins supported by the containerized TuneD

# ...

- name: tuned_profile_n
  data: |
    # TuneD profile specification
    [main]
    summary=Description of tuned_profile_n profile

    # tuned_profile_n profile settings

Recommended profiles

The profile: selection logic is defined by the recommend: section of the CR. The recommend: section is a list of items to recommend the profiles based on a selection criteria.

recommend:
<recommend-item-1>
# ...
<recommend-item-n>

The individual items of the list:

- machineConfigLabels: 1
    <mcLabels> 2
  match: 3
    <match> 4
  priority: <priority> 5
  profile: <tuned_profile_name> 6
  operand: 7
    debug: <bool> 8
    tunedConfig:
      reapply_sysctl: <bool> 9

<match> is an optional list recursively defined as follows:

- label: <label_name> 1
  value: <label_value> 2
  type: <label_type> 3
    <match> 4

If <match> is not omitted, all nested <match> sections must also evaluate to true. Otherwise, false is assumed and the profile with the respective <match> section will not be applied or recommended. Therefore, the nesting (child <match> sections) works as logical AND operator. Conversely, if any item of the <match> list matches, the entire <match> list evaluates to true. Therefore, the list acts as logical OR operator.

If machineConfigLabels is defined, machine config pool based matching is turned on for the given recommend: list item. <mcLabels> specifies the labels for a machine config. The machine config is created automatically to apply host settings, such as kernel boot parameters, for the profile <tuned_profile_name>. This involves finding all machine config pools with machine config selector matching <mcLabels> and setting the profile <tuned_profile_name> on all nodes that are assigned the found machine config pools. To target nodes that have both master and worker roles, you must use the master role.

The list items match and machineConfigLabels are connected by the logical OR operator. The match item is evaluated first in a short-circuit manner. Therefore, if it evaluates to true, the machineConfigLabels item is not considered.

- match:
  - label: tuned.openshift.io/elasticsearch
    match:
    - label: node-role.kubernetes.io/master
    - label: node-role.kubernetes.io/infra
    type: pod
  priority: 10
  profile: openshift-control-plane-es
- match:
  - label: node-role.kubernetes.io/master
  - label: node-role.kubernetes.io/infra
  priority: 20
  profile: openshift-control-plane
- priority: 30
  profile: openshift-node

The CR above is translated for the containerized TuneD daemon into its recommend.conf file based on the profile priorities. The profile with the highest priority (10) is openshift-control-plane-es and, therefore, it is considered first. The containerized TuneD daemon running on a given node looks to see if there is a pod running on the same node with the tuned.openshift.io/elasticsearch label set. If not, the entire <match> section evaluates as false. If there is such a pod with the label, in order for the <match> section to evaluate to true, the node label also needs to be node-role.kubernetes.io/master or node-role.kubernetes.io/infra.

If the labels for the profile with priority 10 matched, openshift-control-plane-es profile is applied and no other profile is considered. If the node/pod label combination did not match, the second highest priority profile (openshift-control-plane) is considered. This profile is applied if the containerized TuneD pod runs on a node with labels node-role.kubernetes.io/master or node-role.kubernetes.io/infra.

Finally, the profile openshift-node has the lowest priority of 30. It lacks the <match> section and, therefore, will always match. It acts as a profile catch-all to set openshift-node profile, if no other profile with higher priority matches on a given node.

apiVersion: tuned.openshift.io/v1
kind: Tuned
metadata:
  name: openshift-node-custom
  namespace: openshift-cluster-node-tuning-operator
spec:
  profile:
  - data: |
      [main]
      summary=Custom OpenShift node profile with an additional kernel parameter
      include=openshift-node
      [bootloader]
      cmdline_openshift_node_custom=+skew_tick=1
    name: openshift-node-custom

  recommend:
  - machineConfigLabels:
      machineconfiguration.openshift.io/role: "worker-custom"
    priority: 20
    profile: openshift-node-custom

To minimize node reboots, label the target nodes with a label the machine config pool’s node selector will match, then create the Tuned CR above and finally create the custom machine config pool itself.

Cloud provider-specific TuneD profiles

With this functionality, all Cloud provider-specific nodes can conveniently be assigned a TuneD profile specifically tailored to a given Cloud provider on a Red Hat OpenShift Service on AWS cluster. This can be accomplished without adding additional node labels or grouping nodes into machine config pools.

This functionality takes advantage of spec.providerID node object values in the form of <cloud-provider>://<cloud-provider-specific-id> and writes the file /var/lib/ocp-tuned/provider with the value <cloud-provider> in NTO operand containers. The content of this file is then used by TuneD to load provider-<cloud-provider> profile if such profile exists.

The openshift profile that both openshift-control-plane and openshift-node profiles inherit settings from is now updated to use this functionality through the use of conditional profile loading. Neither NTO nor TuneD currently include any Cloud provider-specific profiles. However, it is possible to create a custom profile provider-<cloud-provider> that will be applied to all Cloud provider-specific cluster nodes.

apiVersion: tuned.openshift.io/v1
kind: Tuned
metadata:
  name: provider-gce
  namespace: openshift-cluster-node-tuning-operator
spec:
  profile:
  - data: |
      [main]
      summary=GCE Cloud provider-specific profile
      # Your tuning for GCE Cloud provider goes here.
    name: provider-gce

The following are the default profiles set on a cluster.

apiVersion: tuned.openshift.io/v1
kind: Tuned
metadata:
  name: default
  namespace: openshift-cluster-node-tuning-operator
spec:
  profile:
  - data: |
      [main]
      summary=Optimize systems running OpenShift (provider specific parent profile)
      include=-provider-${f:exec:cat:/var/lib/ocp-tuned/provider},openshift
    name: openshift
  recommend:
  - profile: openshift-control-plane
    priority: 30
    match:
    - label: node-role.kubernetes.io/master
    - label: node-role.kubernetes.io/infra
  - profile: openshift-node
    priority: 40

Starting with Red Hat OpenShift Service on AWS 4.9, all OpenShift TuneD profiles are shipped with the TuneD package. You can use the oc exec command to view the contents of these profiles:

$ oc exec $tuned_pod -n openshift-cluster-node-tuning-operator -- find /usr/lib/tuned/openshift{,-control-plane,-node} -name tuned.conf -exec grep -H ^ {} \;

Excluding the [main] section, the following TuneD plugins are supported when using custom profiles defined in the profile: section of the Tuned CR:

There is some dynamic tuning functionality provided by some of these plugins that is not supported. The following TuneD plugins are currently not supported: