osdc-observability

name	osdc-observability
description	OSDC observability: monitoring (metrics) and logging pipelines, three-Alloy architecture, Grafana Cloud Loki + Mimir queries, label strategy, credential setup, and troubleshooting. Applies to ~/meta/ci-infra/osdc. Load when working on monitoring, logging, Alloy, or querying logs.

OSDC Observability: Monitoring + Logging

OSDC has two observability pipelines, both pushing to Grafana Cloud. They use three Grafana Alloy installations to avoid RBAC and config collisions:

Pipeline	Component	Location	Alloy Mode	Namespace	Helm Release
Metrics	modules/monitoring/	Module (opt-in)	Deployment (2 replicas, clustered)	monitoring	alloy
Logs	modules/logging/	Module (opt-in)	DaemonSet (one per node)	logging	alloy-logging
Events	modules/logging/	Module (opt-in)	Deployment (1 replica)	logging	alloy-events

Both modules are secret-gated: Alloy only installs if a grafana-cloud-credentials secret exists in the respective namespace. The secrets have different keys (metrics uses username/password; logging uses loki-username/loki-api-key-write/loki-api-key-read). All Grafana Cloud URLs come from clusters.yaml, not the secret.

Pinned chart versions:

• kube-prometheus-stack: 82.10.3 (in modules/monitoring/deploy.sh)
• prometheus-pushgateway: 3.6.0 (in modules/monitoring/deploy.sh)
• Alloy chart: 1.6.2 (from clusters.yaml alloy_chart_version, used by both modules)

Monitoring (metrics pipeline)

The monitoring module uses kube-prometheus-stack as a CRD + exporter bundle only — Prometheus, Grafana, and AlertManager are all disabled. Alloy discovers ServiceMonitor/PodMonitor CRDs, scrapes targets, and pushes to Grafana Cloud Mimir. A separate prometheus-pushgateway Deployment is installed for short-lived job pushes.

What kube-prometheus-stack provides: CRDs (monitoring.coreos.com), Prometheus Operator, node-exporter (DaemonSet), kube-state-metrics.

What's scraped:

Type	Name	Target Namespace	What it monitors
ServiceMonitor	apiserver	default	Kubernetes API server metrics
ServiceMonitor	arc-controller	arc-systems	ARC controller metrics
ServiceMonitor	buildkit	buildkit	BuildKit builder pod metrics
ServiceMonitor	buildkit-haproxy	buildkit	BuildKit HAProxy load balancer metrics
ServiceMonitor	dcgm-exporter	monitoring	NVIDIA GPU metrics (DCGM) — file lives directly under monitors/dcgm-servicemonitor.yaml, not in the servicemonitors/ subdir
ServiceMonitor	harbor	harbor-system	Harbor exporter metrics
ServiceMonitor	karpenter	karpenter	Karpenter controller metrics
ServiceMonitor	keda	keda	KEDA operator metrics (keda_* keep-list; *_bucket dropped)
ServiceMonitor	node-compactor	kube-system	Node compactor metrics
ServiceMonitor	pushgateway	monitoring	Prometheus Pushgateway metrics
ServiceMonitor	pypi-cache	pypi-cache	PyPI cache nginx + pypiserver metrics
PodMonitor	arc-listeners	arc-systems	ARC listener pods metrics (interval 3m — the only sub-60s exception; all other monitors run at 60s to halve Grafana DPM billing)
PodMonitor	coredns	kube-system	CoreDNS resolver metrics
PodMonitor	nodelocaldns	kube-system	NodeLocal DNSCache — TWO endpoints per pod: :9253 (coredns_* plugin metrics from the Corefile prometheus directive) AND :9353 (coredns_nodecache_* setup-error counters emitted by the binary itself, NOT a CoreDNS plugin). Adding only :9253 would silently miss coredns_nodecache_setup_errors_total — the alert metric.

Currently disabled under IPv6-only EKS: the built-in kubelet ServiceMonitor (/metrics + cAdvisor) is OFF (kubelet.enabled: false in modules/monitoring/helm/values.yaml). Prometheus Operator picks node.status.addresses[0] for the kubelet Endpoints object, which on dual-stack nodes is the IPv4 InternalIP — unreachable from IPv6-only Alloy pods. Consequence: container_memory_working_set_bytes, container_memory_rss, kubelet_running_pods, kubelet_running_containers are NOT in Mimir today. This also makes the cost_control rule's control-plane scoping (below) effectively a no-op for those metrics until a custom IPv6-aware kubelet ServiceMonitor is shipped. See docs/observability.md "Disabled scrapers (IPv6 migration)".

Layered Metrics Filtering (Three Layers)

Cardinality control happens at three distinct layers — knowing which layer a rule lives in matters when debugging "why is metric X missing?":

1. KSM allowlist (modules/monitoring/helm/values.yaml, kube-state-metrics extraArgs): --metric-allowlist=kube_(daemonset|deployment|pod|namespace|node|statefulset|persistentvolume|horizontalpodautoscaler|job)_.+ — drops entire metric families at the exporter before they're scraped. KSM's monitor.metricRelabelings then drops kube_node_status_addresses, benign Completed terminations (kube_pod_container_status_(last_)?terminated_reason;Completed), exit-code-0 terminations (kube_pod_container_status_last_terminated_exitcode;0), and routine status reasons (kube_pod_status_reason;(Shutdown|NodeAffinity)) — keeping only real errors like Evicted, NodeLost, UnexpectedAdmissionError.
2. ServiceMonitor metricRelabelings (modules/monitoring/kubernetes/monitors/servicemonitors/*.yaml): per-target keep/drop rules. Examples: apiserver keeps only apiserver_request_total|apiserver_request_terminations_total; karpenter keeps a focused list and drops histograms; harbor/buildkit drop go_.*|process_.*|promhttp_.*. CoreDNS/API server low-value metrics are dropped here. node-exporter uses a tight keep-allowlist: only node_memory_MemAvailable_bytes, node_memory_MemTotal_bytes, node_nf_conntrack_entries, node_nf_conntrack_entries_limit survive — so CPU/disk/network device metrics are NOT in Mimir by design. (cAdvisor relabel rules would also live here — but the kubelet ServiceMonitor is currently off under IPv6-only EKS, so no cAdvisor metrics reach Alloy.)
3. Alloy cost_control relabel (modules/monitoring/helm/alloy-values.yaml, prometheus.relabel "cost_control"): final pass before remote_write. Five rule groups:
   • KSM low-value: kube_.*_created, kube_.*_metadata_resource_version, kube_secret_.*, kube_configmap_.*, kube_endpoint_.*, kube_lease_.* — blanket drop
   • Control-plane-only scoping: kube_pod_container_status_restarts_total, container_memory_working_set_bytes, container_memory_rss — kept ONLY for arc-systems|karpenter|harbor-system|monitoring|logging|buildkit. Two-step replace+drop pattern (RE2 has no lookahead). Note: the two container_memory_* metrics are sourced from cAdvisor via the kubelet ServiceMonitor — currently disabled under IPv6-only EKS — so this scoping rule is effectively a no-op for those two metrics until a custom IPv6-aware kubelet ServiceMonitor lands
   • Misc high-cardinality: kubernetes_feature_enabled — blanket drop
   • ARC histogram buckets: gha_job_(execution|startup)_duration_seconds_bucket — dropped (sum/count kept)
   • Runtime internals: go_.*, process_.*, promhttp_.*, prometheus_operator_.* — blanket drop

Alerting Architecture — No Local Prometheus

PrometheusRule CRDs in kubernetes/alerts/ are NOT evaluated locally (no Prometheus instance). Alloy's mimir.rules.kubernetes syncs them to Grafana Cloud Mimir, which evaluates rules and routes alerts via Grafana Cloud Alerting.

Alert groups present:

• arc-alerts.yaml
• gpu-alerts.yaml
• harbor-cache-recovery-alerts.yaml
• infrastructure-alerts.yaml
• network-pressure-alerts.yaml (group ipv6-network-pressure: NodeConntrackHighWarn >80%, NodeConntrackHighCritical >95%, NodeConntrackMetricMissing — relevant under IPv6-only EKS where pod→IPv4-internet egress goes through VPC CNI's IPv4 SNAT, which is conntrack-heavy)
• node-compactor-alerts.yaml
• nodelocaldns-alerts.yaml (NodeLocalDNSSetupErrors critical, NodeLocalDNSPodRestarting warning, NodeLocalDNSDaemonSetDegraded warning — note the coredns_nodecache_* metric prefix, NOT nodelocaldns_*)
• zombie-cleanup-alerts.yaml

DCGM GPU Metrics — Custom Subset

DCGM exporter uses a curated 23-metric subset via a ConfigMap at modules/monitoring/kubernetes/dcgm-exporter/custom-metrics-configmap.yaml (mounted to /etc/dcgm-exporter/custom-metrics.csv in the pod). Composition: Tier 1 essentials (14) + Tier 1 errors (6) + Tier 2 diagnostic (3) = 23. High-cardinality labels dropped via metricRelabelings: UUID, modelName, DCGM_FI_DRIVER_VERSION, pci_bus_id.

Image pin + resource shape (modules/monitoring/kubernetes/dcgm-exporter/daemonset.yaml):

• Image: nvcr.io/nvidia/k8s/dcgm-exporter:4.5.2-4.8.1-distroless
• Args: -f /etc/dcgm-exporter/custom-metrics.csv --collect-interval=60000 (60s — matches the global 60s scrape interval)
• Resources: requests=100m cpu / 256Mi memory, limits=200m cpu / 512Mi memory
• GOMEMLIMIT=450MiB (~88% of the 512Mi cgroup limit) — keeps Go GC inside the cgroup ceiling.
• Runs only on nvidia.com/gpu.present=true nodes; tolerates nvidia.com/gpu, instance-type, node-fleet taints.

Configuration (clusters.yaml)

defaults:
  monitoring:
    grafana_cloud_url: "https://prometheus-prod-36-prod-us-west-0.grafana.net/api/prom/push"
    grafana_cloud_read_url: "https://prometheus-prod-36-prod-us-west-0.grafana.net/api/prom"
  alloy_chart_version: "1.6.2"

The namespace key is not in clusters.yaml — deploy.sh defaults it to monitoring (and logging for the logging module). All accessible clusters today (meta-staging/prod, arc-cbr-production*, lf-prod-aws-ue1/ue2) enable both monitoring and logging in their modules: list.

Dashboards (sibling grafana/ directory, NOT inside osdc/)

Dashboards no longer live under version control inside osdc/. They were moved to a sibling top-level grafana/ folder at repo root and are published to Grafana Cloud by the .github/workflows/grafana-publish.yml workflow on every push to main that touches grafana/**.

• Tooling: gcx (Grafana Cloud explorer CLI) pinned via grafana/mise.toml.
• Generator: grafana/generator.py (creates grafana/generated/ resource files from the top-level *.json dashboard sources, currently osdc.json and pytorch_devx.json).
• Tasks: mise run generate --folder <UID>, mise run validate --folder <UID>, mise run push --folder <UID>. The CI workflow runs mise run push --folder fvnzj9 (the OSDC folder UID at https://pytorchci.grafana.net/dashboards/f/fvnzj9).
• Credentials: GRAFANA_TOKEN (CI secret PYTORCHCI_GRAFANA_API_TOKEN). Never persist in shell profiles, logs, or commits.
• Dashboard panel queries reference the OSDC metrics defined in this module; see grafana/CLAUDE.md for the runner_group_name ↔ cluster mapping table that must be kept in sync when adding new clusters.

Logging (log collection pipeline)

modules/logging/ collects system journal entries and Kubernetes events, pushing to Grafana Cloud Loki. Container stdout/stderr is intentionally NOT shipped — the runner-job log volume was too costly relative to the value (GitHub Actions stores full workflow logs already), and a long-broken Alloy file-discovery path made the absence invisible until smoke tests were hardened.

Two log sources:

• System journal: loki.source.journal from /var/log/journal — DaemonSet alloy-logging, units kubelet.service|containerd.service|kernel|nvidia-fabricmanager.service|nvidia-persistenced.service
• Kubernetes events: loki.source.kubernetes_events — single-replica Deployment alloy-events with its own inline config (JSON parsing, label promotion, structured metadata, plus its own feedback-loop drop for the logging namespace)

Journal Pipeline

modules/logging/pipelines/base.alloy defines the journal pipeline. It maps RFC 5424 syslog priorities to levels (0-3→error, 4→warn, 5-6→info, 7→debug), drops priority-7 (level=debug) entries with drop_counter_reason="journal_debug", and moves node to structured metadata so it stays queryable without indexing cost.

Configuration (clusters.yaml)

logging:
  grafana_cloud_loki_url: "https://logs-prod-021.grafana.net/loki/api/v1/push"

Label Strategy

Label	Type	Query Usage
cluster	external_label	{cluster="..."}
unit	indexed	{unit="..."} (journal logs)
level	indexed	{level="error"} (journal, from priority mapping)
node	structured metadata (Loki 3.x)	{...} | node="..." (pipe, NOT inside {})
type, kind	indexed (events only)	{type="Warning", kind="Pod"}
reason, sourcecomponent	structured metadata (events only)	{kind="Pod"} | reason="..."

node is moved to structured metadata via stage.structured_metadata + stage.label_drop. Use the pipe | syntax to filter, NOT label matchers {}.

Key Gotchas (both pipelines)

• RBAC isolation: logging uses fullnameOverride: alloy-logging, events uses alloy-events — avoids ClusterRole/ClusterRoleBinding collision with the monitoring Alloy
• Clustering: monitoring Alloy enables clustering { enabled = true } for HA target dedup across the 2 replicas; logging Alloy disables clustering (DaemonSet, each pod owns its node's logs)
• CRD ordering: ServiceMonitor/PodMonitor CRDs don't exist until kube-prometheus-stack installs. Monitors live in kubernetes/monitors/ applied by deploy.sh after Helm install
• Admission webhook: kube-prometheus-stack's admission webhook job has no tolerations by default. On OSDC clusters where all base nodes are tainted, the job stays Pending forever. Helm values must include tolerations for prometheusOperator.admissionWebhooks.patch (CriticalAddonsOnly)
• IPv6 dual-stack listen address: both logging Alloy releases (alloy-logging DaemonSet and alloy-events Deployment) set alloy.listenAddr: "[::]" in their Helm values. The chart default 0.0.0.0 is IPv4-only and the kubelet readinessProbe on IPv6-only EKS targets the pod's IPv6 address, leaving the pod stuck NotReady. Same rationale for node-exporter's listenOnAllInterfaces: false (forces bind to status.hostIP so the IPv6 address is reachable)
• Credential setup: each pipeline needs its own secret created manually before first deploy (see below)

Credential Setup (one-time per cluster)

Monitoring namespace (Alloy push + smoke test read) — secret holds ONLY username/password for Mimir write. The Loki keys belong in the logging secret, not here:

kubectl create secret generic grafana-cloud-credentials \
  -n monitoring \
  --from-literal=username='<GRAFANA_CLOUD_METRICS_USER_ID>' \
  --from-literal=password='<API_KEY_WITH_METRICS_WRITE_SCOPE>'

# Separate read secret for Mimir queries (see "Querying" below)
kubectl create secret generic grafana-cloud-read-credentials \
  -n monitoring \
  --from-literal=username='<GRAFANA_CLOUD_METRICS_USER_ID>' \
  --from-literal=password='<API_KEY_WITH_METRICS_READ_SCOPE>'

Logging namespace:

kubectl create namespace logging
kubectl create secret generic grafana-cloud-credentials \
  -n logging \
  --from-literal=loki-username='<GRAFANA_CLOUD_LOKI_USER_ID>' \
  --from-literal=loki-api-key-write='<API_KEY_WITH_LOGS_WRITE_SCOPE>' \
  --from-literal=loki-api-key-read='<API_KEY_WITH_LOGS_READ_SCOPE>'

Both pipelines skip silently if their secret is missing. Grafana Cloud URLs come from clusters.yaml (monitoring.grafana_cloud_url for write, monitoring.grafana_cloud_read_url for read), NOT from secrets.

Querying Logs in Grafana Cloud Loki

When kubectl logs is unavailable (pod terminated, node evicted), historical logs survive in Grafana Cloud Loki.

ALL kubectl calls require the Meta corporate proxy bypass (NO_PROXY="$NO_PROXY,.eks.amazonaws.com" no_proxy="$no_proxy,.eks.amazonaws.com") and mise exec -- prefix. Without this, every kubectl call hits "connection refused".

Step 1 — Extract credentials:

LOKI_USER=$(NO_PROXY="$NO_PROXY,.eks.amazonaws.com" no_proxy="$no_proxy,.eks.amazonaws.com" \
  mise exec -- kubectl get secret grafana-cloud-credentials -n logging \
  -o jsonpath='{.data.loki-username}' | base64 -d)

LOKI_READ_KEY=$(NO_PROXY="$NO_PROXY,.eks.amazonaws.com" no_proxy="$no_proxy,.eks.amazonaws.com" \
  mise exec -- kubectl get secret grafana-cloud-credentials -n logging \
  -o jsonpath='{.data.loki-api-key-read}' | base64 -d)

LOKI_URL="https://logs-prod-021.grafana.net"

The Loki URL comes from clusters.yaml (logging.grafana_cloud_loki_url), minus the /loki/api/v1/push suffix.

Step 2 — Query with curl:

# Journal logs by unit (kubelet, containerd)
curl -s -u "$LOKI_USER:$LOKI_READ_KEY" \
    "$LOKI_URL/loki/api/v1/query_range" \
    --data-urlencode 'query={cluster="<cluster-name>", unit="kubelet.service"}' \
    --data-urlencode "limit=100" \
    --data-urlencode "start=$(date -u -v-1H +%s)000000000" \
    --data-urlencode "end=$(date -u +%s)000000000" | jq .

# Filter by node (structured metadata — pipe syntax)
curl -s -u "$LOKI_USER:$LOKI_READ_KEY" \
    "$LOKI_URL/loki/api/v1/query_range" \
    --data-urlencode 'query={cluster="<cluster-name>", unit="kubelet.service"} | node="<node-name>"' \
    --data-urlencode "limit=100" \
    --data-urlencode "start=$(date -u -v-1H +%s)000000000" \
    --data-urlencode "end=$(date -u +%s)000000000" | jq .

# Pod logs by namespace + container
curl -s -u "$LOKI_USER:$LOKI_READ_KEY" \
    "$LOKI_URL/loki/api/v1/query_range" \
    --data-urlencode 'query={cluster="<cluster-name>", namespace="arc-runners", container="runner"}' \
    --data-urlencode "limit=100" \
    --data-urlencode "start=$(date -u -v-1H +%s)000000000" \
    --data-urlencode "end=$(date -u +%s)000000000" | jq .

# Filter pod logs by specific pod (structured metadata)
curl -s -u "$LOKI_USER:$LOKI_READ_KEY" \
    "$LOKI_URL/loki/api/v1/query_range" \
    --data-urlencode 'query={cluster="<cluster-name>", namespace="arc-runners"} | pod="<pod-name>"' \
    --data-urlencode "limit=100" \
    --data-urlencode "start=$(date -u -v-6H +%s)000000000" \
    --data-urlencode "end=$(date -u +%s)000000000" | jq .

# List labels / values
curl -s -u "$LOKI_USER:$LOKI_READ_KEY" "$LOKI_URL/loki/api/v1/labels" | jq .
curl -s -u "$LOKI_USER:$LOKI_READ_KEY" "$LOKI_URL/loki/api/v1/label/cluster/values" | jq .

See docs/loki_query.md for the full reference (combined templates, time-range helpers, structured metadata reference).

Querying Metrics in Grafana Cloud Mimir

Mimir exposes a Prometheus-compatible HTTP API. Use the separate grafana-cloud-read-credentials secret in the monitoring namespace — NOT grafana-cloud-credentials (which only has write scope for Alloy).

MIMIR_USER=$(NO_PROXY="$NO_PROXY,.eks.amazonaws.com" no_proxy="$no_proxy,.eks.amazonaws.com" \
  mise exec -- kubectl get secret grafana-cloud-read-credentials -n monitoring \
  -o jsonpath='{.data.username}' | base64 -d)

MIMIR_PASS=$(NO_PROXY="$NO_PROXY,.eks.amazonaws.com" no_proxy="$no_proxy,.eks.amazonaws.com" \
  mise exec -- kubectl get secret grafana-cloud-read-credentials -n monitoring \
  -o jsonpath='{.data.password}' | base64 -d)

MIMIR_URL="https://prometheus-prod-36-prod-us-west-0.grafana.net/api/prom"

# Instant query
curl -s -u "$MIMIR_USER:$MIMIR_PASS" \
    "$MIMIR_URL/api/v1/query" \
    --data-urlencode 'query=up{cluster="<cluster-name>"}' | jq .

# Range query
curl -s -u "$MIMIR_USER:$MIMIR_PASS" \
    "$MIMIR_URL/api/v1/query_range" \
    --data-urlencode 'query=rate(node_cpu_seconds_total{cluster="<cluster-name>", mode="idle"}[5m])' \
    --data-urlencode "start=$(date -u -v-1H +%s)" \
    --data-urlencode "end=$(date -u +%s)" \
    --data-urlencode "step=60" | jq .

The Mimir URL comes from clusters.yaml (monitoring.grafana_cloud_read_url). See docs/mimir_query.md for the full reference.

Troubleshooting

• Alloy not installed: check kubectl get secret grafana-cloud-credentials -n {logging,monitoring} — deploy is skipped without it
• Alloy memory: all three Alloys have explicit Go runtime tuning via deploy.sh extraEnv. Centralized Deployments get generous headroom because their cost multiplies by 1 (not by node count); the DaemonSet is tuned tighter because its cost multiplies by node count.
  • Monitoring Alloy (Deployment, 2 replicas): GOMEMLIMIT=7000MiB (~85% of 8Gi cgroup), no GOGC override.
  • Logging DaemonSet (alloy-logging): requests=1Gi/limits=2Gi, GOGC=200, GOMEMLIMIT=1800MiB (~85% of 2Gi cgroup) for high-throughput CI nodes.
  • Events Deployment (alloy-events): GOGC=200, GOMEMLIMIT=3500MiB (~85% of 4Gi cgroup). Default upstream is 1Gi — bump only if kubectl describe pod shows OOMKilled. When raising the cgroup limit, also bump GOMEMLIMIT to ~85% of the new ceiling.
• DCGM exporter OOM: pod is sized requests=256Mi/limits=512Mi with GOMEMLIMIT=450MiB and 60s collection interval (--collect-interval=60000). Aggressive limits were chosen because the per-GPU metric set was trimmed to 23 metrics; if DCGM is OOMKilled after re-introducing metrics, bump resources.limits.memory AND GOMEMLIMIT together (keep GOMEMLIMIT at ~88% of the new cgroup ceiling).
• Alloy did not pick up secret rotation: monitoring deploy.sh runs kubectl rollout restart deployment/alloy after every successful Helm upgrade and waits on rollout status. Secret values are referenced via valueFrom.secretKeyRef, so Kubernetes will NOT restart pods when the secret value changes — only the explicit rollout does. If you rotate credentials without redeploying, force a rollout manually.
• Missing pod logs: container stdout/stderr is intentionally NOT shipped. Look at GitHub Actions workflow logs (for runner jobs), kubectl logs (while the pod is still alive), or pod events via the alloy-events Deployment in Loki ({cluster="X", kind="Pod"})
• Sampling-related "missing" logs: not applicable — namespace-based sampling stages were removed with the pod-log pipeline
• Rate limiting: not applicable — the per-pod rate-limit stage was removed with the pod-log pipeline. Journal logs go through loki.process "system_logs" which has no rate limit; volume is bounded by the per-unit keep filter on the journal source (kubelet|containerd|kernel|nvidia-*)
• Journal path empty: EKS AL2023 uses /var/log/journal — hostPath uses DirectoryOrCreate so it won't crash, but no journal logs will appear if path is wrong
• Dashboard publish failed: grafana-publish.yml runs mise run push --folder fvnzj9 from the grafana/ directory. Validation is gated by gcx resources validate; if it fails, the dashboard JSON in grafana/*.json is malformed or references a missing datasource. Reproduce locally with cd grafana && mise run validate --folder fvnzj9.