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Container Service for Kubernetes:Overview of container storage monitoring

Last Updated:Feb 26, 2025

After you enable Managed Service for Prometheus for your cluster, you can view the monitoring information of the storage resources in the cluster, on nodes, and in pods. You can also view the monitoring information about external storage resources that are mounted to the cluster as volumes. This allows you to view the usage information of the storage resources used by the cluster in real time. This topic describes the usage and monitoring methods of container storage and how to view the monitoring dashboard of each storage type.

Prerequisites

Usage and monitoring methods of container storage

  • Container storage that supports the monitoring feature

    Container storage type

    Underlying storage

    Monitoring method

    emptyDir

    Directory of the node in which the pod resides

    On the Prometheus Monitoring page, click Application Monitoring and then click the Pods tab. The ephemeral storage dashboard is displayed. For more information, see Ephemeral storage monitoring.

    Note

    emptyDir does not have separate storage monitoring metrics and can only be viewed as part of ephemeral storage in the ephemeral storage monitoring section of the pod dashboard.

    Disk volumes

    Alibaba Cloud disks

    On the Prometheus Monitoring page, click Storage Monitoring, and then click the CSI Disk tab. The disk volume dashboard is displayed. For more information, see Disk volume monitoring.

    File Storage NAS (NAS) volumes

    NAS

    On the Prometheus Monitoring page, click Storage Monitoring and then click the CSI NAS tab. The NAS volume dashboard is displayed. For more information, see NAS volume monitoring.

    Object Storage Service (OSS) volumes

    OSS

    On the Prometheus Monitoring page, click Storage Monitoring and then click the CSI OSS tab. The OSS volume dashboard is displayed. For more information, see OSS volume monitoring.

  • Container storage that does not support the monitoring feature

    Container storage type

    Underlying storage

    Why the monitoring feature is not supported

    hostPath

    File or directory of the node in which the pod resides

    The hostPath volume is not counted as the ephemeral storage of pods and is not monitored by the kubelet.

    Secrets and ConfigMaps

    Secrets and ConfigMaps in the cluster

    Secrets and ConfigMaps do not have robust storage monitoring requirements. Currently, the community does not have a monitoring design for such volumes.

View storage monitoring information in the console

  1. Log on to the ACK console. In the left-side navigation pane, click Clusters.

  2. On the Clusters page, find the cluster that you want to manage and click its name. In the left-side pane, choose Operations > Prometheus Monitoring.

Cluster dashboard

On the Prometheus Monitoring page, click Monitoring Overview and then click the Cluster Overview tab. The cluster dashboard is displayed.

The following figures show the information displayed on the cluster dashboard. The following table describes the metrics displayed on the cluster dashboard.

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Metric

Description

PVC Overview

Displays an overview of the volumes mounted to the cluster, including the persistent volume claim (PVC) name, persistent volume (PV) name, type, and namespace of each volume. In addition, you can view the number of nodes to which each volume is mounted and the total capacity, capacity usage, and capacity utilization of each volume.

Container File System Usage(Top 10)

The top 10 containers with the highest root file system capacity usage.

Container File System Inode Usage(Top 10)

The top 10 containers with the highest inode usage in the root file system.

Node dashboard

On the Prometheus Monitoring page, click Node Monitoring, and then click the Nodes tab. The node dashboard is displayed.

The node dashboard displays the monitoring information of disks and PVCs. The following figure shows the diagrams displayed on the node dashboard. The following table describes the metrics displayed on the node dashboard.

Disk monitoring

image

Metric

Description

Disk Read / Write Rate (IOPs)

The IOPS of disk reads and writes.

Disk Read / Write

The disk read and write speed.

Disk IO Read / Write Time

The disk read and write time.

Disk IO Read / Write Latency (Time/IO)

The latency of disk reads and writes.

PVC monitoring

This section displays an overview of the PVCs mounted to the node and the real-time read and write speed of each PVC.

image

Metric

Description

Disk File System Usage (%)

The disk capacity utilization.

Disk File System Usage (Bytes)

The disk capacity usage.

Disk File System Available (Bytes)

The available disk capacity.

PVC Overview

Displays an overview of the volumes mounted to the cluster, including the PVC name, PV name, type, and namespace of each volume. In addition, you can view the number of nodes to which each volume is mounted and the total capacity, capacity usage, and capacity utilization of each volume.

PVC Read / Write

The real-time read and write speed of each volume.

Pod dashboard

On the Prometheus Monitoring page, click Application Monitoring, and then click the Pods tab. The pod dashboard is displayed.

The storage resources in a pod include the root file system and ephemeral storage. The following figure shows the diagrams displayed on the pod dashboard. The following table describes the metrics displayed on the pod dashboard.

Root file system monitoring

Important

If your cluster runs Kubernetes 1.24 or later, the metrics on the pod dashboard depend on csi-plugin. You must ensure that CSI 1.28.3-eb95171-aliyun or later is used. If the CSI plug-in version is earlier than 1.28.3-eb95171-aliyun, no metric is displayed on the pod dashboard. For more information about the release notes for csi-plugin, see csi-plugin. For more information about how to update the CSI plug-in, see Update csi-plugin and csi-provisioner.

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Metric

Description

Pod File System Usage

The storage capacity usage of the root file system in the pod.

Pod File System Usage(%)

The storage capacity utilization of the root file system in the pod.

Pod File System Read

The real-time read speed of the root file system in the pod.

Pod File System Write

The real-time write speed of the root file system in the pod.

Ephemeral storage monitoring

image

Metric

Description

Ephemeral Storage Usage

The ephemeral storage usage of the pod.

Ephemeral Storage Usage(%)

The ephemeral storage utilization of the pod.

Note

This metric is collected only if you specify the spec.containers[].resources.limits.ephemeral-storage parameter.

Ephemeral Inode Usage

The number of inodes used in the ephemeral storage of the pod.

Ephemeral Storage Inode Usage(%)

The inode utilization in the ephemeral storage of the pod.

Volume dashboard

If disk,NAS, or OSS volumes are mounted to the pods in your cluster, you can view information about the usage of the preceding volumes by using the following methods:

Disk volume monitoring

On the Prometheus Monitoring page, click Storage Monitoring and then click the CSI Disk tab. The disk volume dashboard is displayed. You can view information about the disk PVCs, the nodes to which disk volumes are mounted, and the disk volume usage in the disk volume dashboard.

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NAS volume monitoring

On the Prometheus Monitoring page, click Storage Monitoring and then click the CSI NAS tab. The NAS volume dashboard is displayed. You can view information about the NAS PVCs, the nodes to which NAS volumes are mounted, and the NAS volume usage in the NAS volume dashboard.

Important

Only NAS volumes that are used by Container Network File System (CNFS) have data of the four metrics: utilization, total capacity, used capacity, and available capacity.

image

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OSS volume monitoring

On the Prometheus Monitoring page, click Storage Monitoring and then click the CSI OSS tab. The OSS volume dashboard is displayed. You can view information about the OSS PVCs, the nodes to which OSS volumes are mounted, and the OSS volume usage in the OSS volume dashboard.oss.png

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References