Monitoring and operations

Atmosphere includes a Grafana deployment with dashboards created by default and a Prometheus deployment that collects metrics from the cluster and sends alerts to Alertmanager. Loki also collects logs from the cluster using Vector.

Philosophy and alerting levels

Atmosphere’s monitoring philosophy is strongly aligned with the principles outlined in the Google Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) book. The approach focuses on alerting that’s meaningful, practical, and directly tied to user-visible impact.

Alerting philosophy

Symptom-based alerting

Symptom-based alerts take priority over cause-based alerts. They focus on conditions that directly affect users or service health, such as elevated error rates or increased latency, rather than internal system state.

Cause-based alerts are acceptable only when no reasonable symptom-based proxy exists, or when they serve as leading indicators for capacity planning (typically P4 or P5).

Error budget driven alerting

When service-level objectives (SLOs) exist for a service, burn-rate alerts work better than static threshold alerts. A burn-rate alert fires when the error budget depletes faster than expected, which accounts for baseline error rates and avoids alerting on acceptable levels of degradation.

Escalation model

The alerting system scales severity with impact. Most alerts affecting a single system trigger a lower priority level (P4 or P5). If an issue affects the entire control plane of a specific service, it escalates to a P3 or P2. If a service is entirely unavailable, it becomes a P1.

Inhibition and grouping

Alerts have dependency awareness. When a parent component fails (for example, a node goes down), inhibition rules in Alertmanager suppress child component alerts (for example, pods on that node) to avoid cascading alert storms. The system groups related alerts so that a single notification represents a coherent incident rather than dozens of individual symptoms.

Minimizing noise

Minimizing alert noise keeps every notification meaningful and worthy of action. Every alert should provide enough information to initiate an immediate and effective response, regardless of business hours for high priority alerts.

Monitoring and alerting strategies improve over time to better identify and respond to incidents. The ultimate goal is to provide a reliable and high-quality service to all users.

Severity levels

The alerting system classifies incidents into different severity levels based on their impact on the system and users.

P1: Critical

This level covers incidents causing a complete service disruption or significant loss of functionality across the entire Atmosphere platform. Immediate response, attention, and action are necessary regardless of business hours.

Notification: Page to on-call engineer with escalation.

P2: High

This level is for incidents that affect a large group of users or critical system components. These incidents require swift attention and action, regardless of business hours, but don’t cause a total disruption.

Notification: Page to on-call engineer.

P3: Moderate

This level is for incidents that affect a smaller group of users or a single system. These incidents require attention and may necessitate action during business hours.

Notification: Alert channel with mention.

P4: Low

This level covers minor issues that have a limited impact on a small subset of users or system functionality. These incidents require attention and action, if necessary, during standard business hours.

Notification: Alert channel, no mention.

P5: Informational

This is the lowest level of severity, used for providing information about normal system activities or minor issues that don’t significantly impact users or system functionality. These incidents typically don’t require immediate attention or action and operators address them during standard business hours.

Notification: Informational channel or email digest.

Operational procedures

Creating silences

To create a silence, log in to your Grafana instance that Atmosphere deploys as an admin user.

  1. Click on the hamburger menu in the top left corner and select “Alerting” and then “Silences” from the menu.

    Silences menu
  2. Make sure that you select “Alertmanager” on the top right corner of the page, this ensures that you create a silence inside of the Alertmanager that’s managed by the Prometheus operator instead of the built-in Grafana Alertmanager which isn’t used.

    Alertmanager selection

    It’s important that you select the Alertmanager that’s managed by the Prometheus operator, otherwise your silence won’t apply to the Prometheus instance that Atmosphere deploys.

  3. Click the “Add Silence” button and use the Alertmanager format to create your silence, which you can test by seeing if it matches any alerts in the list labeled “Affected alert instances”.

Limit the number of labels

It’s important to limit the number of labels that you use in your silence to make sure it continues to work even if the alerts change.

For example, if you have an alert that carries the following labels:

  • alertname

  • instance

  • job

  • severity

You should only use the alertname and severity labels in your silence to make sure it continues to work even if the instance or job labels change.

Configurations

Dashboard management

For Grafana, rather than enabling persistence through the application’s user interface or manual Helm chart modifications, manage dashboards directly via the Helm chart values.

Avoid Manual Persistence Configurations!

It’s important to avoid manual persistence configurations, especially for services like Grafana, where dashboards and data sources can persist. Such practices aren’t captured in version control and pose a risk of data loss, configuration drift, and upgrade complications.

To manage Grafana dashboards through Helm, include the dashboard definitions within your configuration file. This approach enables version-controlled dashboard configurations that you can replicate across different deployments without manual intervention.

For example, you can define a dashboard in the Helm values like this:

kube_prometheus_stack_helm_values:
  grafana:
    dashboards:
      default:
        my-dashboard:
          gnetId: 10000
          revision: 1
          datasource: Prometheus

This instructs Helm to fetch and configure the specified dashboard from Grafana.com dashboards, using Prometheus as the data source. You can find more examples of how to do this in the Grafana Helm chart Import Dashboards documentation.

Viewing data

The monitoring stack offers a few different ways to view collected data. The most common ways are through Alertmanager, Grafana, and Prometheus.

Grafana dashboard

By default, Atmosphere creates an Ingress for Grafana using the kube_prometheus_stack_grafana_host variable. Keycloak handles authentication, and Atmosphere deploys it by default.

Inside Keycloak, Atmosphere creates two client roles for Grafana:

grafana:admin

Has access to all organization resources, including dashboards, users, and teams.

grafana:editor

Can view and edit dashboards, folders, and playlists.

grafana:viewer

Can view dashboards, playlists, and query data sources.

You can view the existing dashboards by going to Manage > Dashboards. You can also check any alerts that are currently firing by going to Alerting > Alerts.

Prometheus

By default, Prometheus sits behind an Ingress using the kube_prometheus_stack_prometheus_host variable. It also runs behind the oauth2-proxy service, which handles authentication so that only authenticated users can access the Prometheus UI.

Alternative authentication

You can bypass the oauth2-proxy service and use an alternative authentication method to access the Prometheus UI. In both cases, you override the servicePort on the Ingress to point to the port where Prometheus runs instead of the oauth2-proxy service.

Advanced Usage Only

It’s strongly recommended that you stick to keeping the oauth2-proxy service in front of the Prometheus UI. The oauth2-proxy service is responsible for authenticating users and ensuring that only authenticated users can access the Prometheus UI.

Basic authentication

To use basic authentication for the Prometheus UI instead of the oauth2-proxy service with single sign-on, make the following changes to your inventory:

kube_prometheus_stack_helm_values:
  prometheus:
    ingress:
      servicePort: 8080
      annotations:
        nginx.ingress.kubernetes.io/auth-type: basic
        nginx.ingress.kubernetes.io/auth-secret: basic-auth-secret-name

In this example, the basic-auth-secret-name secret handles user authentication. Create the secret in the same namespace as the Prometheus deployment based on the Ingress NGINX annotations.

Restricting by address

To restrict Prometheus UI access to specific IP addresses, make the following changes to your inventory:

kube_prometheus_stack_helm_values:
  prometheus:
    ingress:
      servicePort: 8080
      annotations:
        nginx.ingress.kubernetes.io/whitelist-source-range: "10.0.0.0/24,172.10.0.1"

In this example, the configuration restricts access to the IP range 10.0.0.0/24 and the IP address 172.10.0.1.

Alertmanager

By default, the Alertmanager dashboard points to the Ansible variable kube_prometheus_stack_alertmanager_host and sits behind an Ingress with the oauth2-proxy service, protected by Keycloak similar to Prometheus.

Integrations

Since Atmosphere relies on Alertmanager to send alerts, you can integrate it with services like OpsGenie, PagerDuty, email, and more. To receive monitoring alerts using your preferred notification tools, integrate them with Alertmanager.

OpsGenie

To get started, complete the following steps inside OpsGenie:

  1. Create an integration inside OpsGenie, you can do this by going to Settings > Integrations > Add Integration and selecting Prometheus.

  2. Copy the API key that OpsGenie generates for you and set up correct assignment rules inside OpsGenie.

  3. Create a new heartbeat inside OpsGenie, you can do this by going to Settings > Heartbeats > Create Heartbeat. Set the interval to 1 minute.

Afterward, configure the following options for the Atmosphere config, making sure that you replace the placeholders with the correct values:

API_KEY

The API key that you copied from the OpsGenie integration.

HEARTBEAT_NAME

The name of the heartbeat that you created inside OpsGenie

kube_prometheus_stack_helm_values:
  alertmanager:
    config:
      receivers:
        - name: "null"
        - name: notifier
          opsgenie_configs:
            - api_key: API_KEY
              message: >-
                {% raw -%}
                {{ .GroupLabels.alertname }}
                {%- endraw %}
              priority: >-
                {% raw -%}
                {{- if eq .GroupLabels.severity "critical" -}}
                P1
                {{- else if eq .GroupLabels.severity "warning" -}}
                P3
                {{- else if eq .GroupLabels.severity "info" -}}
                P5
                {{- else -}}
                {{ .GroupLabels.severity }}
                {{- end -}}
                {%- endraw %}
              description: |-
                {% raw -%}
                {{ if gt (len .Alerts.Firing) 0 -}}
                Alerts Firing:
                {{ range .Alerts.Firing }}
                  - Message: {{ .Annotations.message }}
                    Labels:
                {{ range .Labels.SortedPairs }}   - {{ .Name }} = {{ .Value }}
                {{ end }}   Annotations:
                {{ range .Annotations.SortedPairs }}   - {{ .Name }} = {{ .Value }}
                {{ end }}   Source: {{ .GeneratorURL }}
                {{ end }}
                {{- end }}
                {{ if gt (len .Alerts.Resolved) 0 -}}
                Alerts Resolved:
                {{ range .Alerts.Resolved }}
                  - Message: {{ .Annotations.message }}
                    Labels:
                {{ range .Labels.SortedPairs }}   - {{ .Name }} = {{ .Value }}
                {{ end }}   Annotations:
                {{ range .Annotations.SortedPairs }}   - {{ .Name }} = {{ .Value }}
                {{ end }}   Source: {{ .GeneratorURL }}
                {{ end }}
                {{- end }}
                {%- endraw %}
        - name: heartbeat
          webhook_configs:
            - url: https://api.opsgenie.com/v2/heartbeats/HEARTBEAT_NAME/ping
              send_resolved: false
              http_config:
                basic_auth:
                  password: API_KEY

Once you deploy the changes, you’ll start to see alerts inside OpsGenie and you can also verify that the heartbeat shows as ACTIVE.

PagerDuty

To integrate with PagerDuty, first prepare an Integration key. To do that, decide how you want to integrate with PagerDuty since there are two ways:

Event Orchestration

This method is beneficial if you want to build different routing rules based on the events coming from the integrated tool.

PagerDuty Service Integration

This method is beneficial if you don’t need to route alerts from the integrated tool to different responders based on the event payload.

For both of these methods, you need to create an Integration key in PagerDuty using the PagerDuty Integration Guide.

Once you’re done, you’ll need to configure the inventory with the following options:

kube_prometheus_stack_helm_values:
  alertmanager:
    config:
      receivers:
        - name: notifier
          pagerduty_configs:
            - service_key: '<your integration key here>'

You can find more details about pagerduty_configs in the Prometheus documentation.

Email

To integrate with email, you need to configure the following options in the inventory:

kube_prometheus_stack_helm_values:
  alertmanager:
    config:
      receivers:
        - name: notifier
          email_configs:
            - smarthost: 'smtp.gmail.com:587'
              auth_username: '<your email id here>'
              auth_password: '<your email password here>'
              from: '<your email id here>'
              to: '<receiver's email id here>'
              headers:
                subject: 'Prometheus Mail Alerts'

You can find more details about email_configs in the Prometheus documentation.

Alerts reference

CoreDNSCriticalErrorBudgetBurn

This alert fires when the CoreDNS SERVFAIL rate exceeds 14.4x the burn rate for a 99.9% SLO. At this rate, the 30-day error budget exhausts in under 2.1 days. It uses multi-window burn-rate detection with 1-hour and 5-minute windows.

Likely root causes

  • Upstream DNS servers are unreachable or returning errors

  • CoreDNS configuration errors after a recent change

  • Network connectivity issues between CoreDNS and upstream resolvers

  • Resource exhaustion (CPU or memory) on CoreDNS pods

Diagnostic and remediation steps

  1. Check CoreDNS pod health and logs:

    kubectl -n kube-system get pods -l k8s-app=kube-dns
    kubectl -n kube-system logs -l k8s-app=kube-dns --tail=100
    
  2. Verify upstream DNS server connectivity:

    kubectl -n kube-system exec -it deploy/coredns -- nslookup example.com
    
  3. Check the current SERVFAIL rate:

    kubectl -n monitoring exec svc/kube-prometheus-stack-prometheus -- \
      promtool query instant http://localhost:9090 \
      'sum(rate(coredns_dns_responses_total{rcode="SERVFAIL"}[5m])) / sum(rate(coredns_dns_responses_total[5m]))'
    
  4. Review CoreDNS ConfigMap for configuration issues:

    kubectl -n kube-system get configmap coredns -o yaml
    
  5. Restart CoreDNS pods if configuration looks correct:

    kubectl -n kube-system rollout restart deployment coredns
    

CoreDNSDown

This alert fires when CoreDNS disappears from Prometheus target discovery for more than 15 minutes. This could indicate crashed pods or an incorrectly configured scrape target.

Likely root causes

  • CoreDNS pods crashed or aren’t scheduling

  • Prometheus scrape configuration changed

  • Node-level issues preventing pod scheduling

  • Resource limits causing out-of-memory termination

Diagnostic and remediation steps

  1. Check CoreDNS pod status:

    kubectl -n kube-system get pods -l k8s-app=kube-dns
    kubectl -n kube-system describe pods -l k8s-app=kube-dns
    
  2. Check for out-of-memory events:

    kubectl -n kube-system get events --field-selector reason=OOMKilling
    
  3. Verify Prometheus can reach the CoreDNS metrics endpoint:

    kubectl -n monitoring exec svc/kube-prometheus-stack-prometheus -- \
      promtool query instant http://localhost:9090 'up{job="coredns"}'
    
  4. Check node availability if pods aren’t scheduling:

    kubectl get nodes -o wide
    

CoreDNSHighErrorBudgetBurn

This alert fires when the CoreDNS SERVFAIL rate exceeds 6x the burn rate for a 99.9% SLO. At this rate, the 30-day error budget exhausts in under 5 days. It uses multi-window burn-rate detection with 6-hour and 30-minute windows.

Likely root causes

  • Intermittent upstream DNS server issues

  • Partial network connectivity problems

  • DNS zone transfer failures

  • Upstream rate limiting

Diagnostic and remediation steps

  1. Check CoreDNS logs for recurring errors:

    kubectl -n kube-system logs -l k8s-app=kube-dns --tail=200 | grep -i error
    
  2. Check the SERVFAIL rate broken down over time:

    kubectl -n monitoring exec svc/kube-prometheus-stack-prometheus -- \
      promtool query instant http://localhost:9090 \
      'sum(rate(coredns_dns_responses_total{rcode="SERVFAIL"}[30m])) / sum(rate(coredns_dns_responses_total[30m]))'
    
  3. Verify upstream DNS server health by testing resolution:

    kubectl -n kube-system exec -it deploy/coredns -- nslookup example.com
    
  4. Review CoreDNS forward plugin configuration:

    kubectl -n kube-system get configmap coredns -o yaml
    

CoreDNSLowErrorBudgetBurn

This alert fires when the CoreDNS SERVFAIL rate exceeds 1x the burn rate for a 99.9% SLO. At this rate, the error budget exhausts before the 30-day window resets. It uses multi-window burn-rate detection with 3-day and 6-hour windows.

Likely root causes

  • Chronic low-level DNS resolution failures

  • Specific zones or domains consistently failing

  • Degraded upstream DNS server performance

  • Incorrectly configured DNS records causing intermittent failures

Diagnostic and remediation steps

  1. Identify which DNS queries are failing:

    kubectl -n kube-system logs -l k8s-app=kube-dns --tail=500 | grep SERVFAIL
    
  2. Check the long-term SERVFAIL trend:

    kubectl -n monitoring exec svc/kube-prometheus-stack-prometheus -- \
      promtool query instant http://localhost:9090 \
      'sum(rate(coredns_dns_responses_total{rcode="SERVFAIL"}[6h])) / sum(rate(coredns_dns_responses_total[6h]))'
    
  3. Review if specific upstream servers are consistently problematic:

    kubectl -n monitoring exec svc/kube-prometheus-stack-prometheus -- \
      promtool query instant http://localhost:9090 \
      'sum by (to) (rate(coredns_forward_responses_total{rcode="SERVFAIL"}[6h]))'
    

CoreDNSModerateErrorBudgetBurn

This alert fires when the CoreDNS SERVFAIL rate exceeds 3x the burn rate for a 99.9% SLO. At this rate, the 30-day error budget exhausts in under 10 days. It uses multi-window burn-rate detection with 1-day and 2-hour windows.

Likely root causes

  • Degraded upstream DNS server responding with errors

  • Network path issues causing intermittent resolution failures

  • DNS zone configuration errors causing partial failures

  • Resource pressure on CoreDNS pods

Diagnostic and remediation steps

  1. Check CoreDNS resource usage:

    kubectl -n kube-system top pods -l k8s-app=kube-dns
    
  2. Review the SERVFAIL rate trend over the last day:

    kubectl -n monitoring exec svc/kube-prometheus-stack-prometheus -- \
      promtool query instant http://localhost:9090 \
      'sum(rate(coredns_dns_responses_total{rcode="SERVFAIL"}[2h])) / sum(rate(coredns_dns_responses_total[2h]))'
    
  3. Check forward plugin health:

    kubectl -n monitoring exec svc/kube-prometheus-stack-prometheus -- \
      promtool query instant http://localhost:9090 \
      'sum(rate(coredns_forward_healthcheck_failures_total[2h]))'
    
  4. Review CoreDNS logs for patterns:

    kubectl -n kube-system logs -l k8s-app=kube-dns --tail=300 | grep -i "error\|fail"
    

etcdDatabaseHighFragmentationRatio

This alert fires when the etcd database has a high fragmentation ratio that can cause performance issues on the cluster. To resolve this issue, use the following command:

kubectl -n kube-system exec svc/kube-prometheus-stack-kube-etcd -- \
  etcdctl defrag \
  --cluster \
  --cacert /etc/kubernetes/pki/etcd/ca.crt \
  --key /etc/kubernetes/pki/etcd/server.key \
  --cert /etc/kubernetes/pki/etcd/server.crt

EtcdMembersDown

If any alerts fire from Prometheus for etcd issues such as TargetDown, etcdMembersDown, or etcdInsufficientMembers, it could be due to expired certificates. You can update the certificates that kube-prometheus-stack uses for talking with etcd with the following commands:

kubectl -n monitoring delete secret/kube-prometheus-stack-etcd-client-cert
kubectl -n monitoring create secret generic kube-prometheus-stack-etcd-client-cert \
    --from-file=/etc/kubernetes/pki/etcd/ca.crt \
    --from-file=/etc/kubernetes/pki/etcd/healthcheck-client.crt \
    --from-file=/etc/kubernetes/pki/etcd/healthcheck-client.key

GeneveTransmitErrors

This alert fires when a node-exporter device meets both of these conditions:

  • The ethtool collector reports it as a Geneve interface.

  • The netdev collector reports more than 1.67 transmit errors per second over a 5-minute window, sustained for 15 minutes.

That rate equates to about 100 errors per minute.

This is a symptom proxy for tenant overlay transmit failures on a compute host. It’s not specific to one root cause: the Linux Geneve transmit path increments errors when encapsulation or underlay transmit fails.

Likely Root Causes

  • Underlay bond or path MTU is too small for encapsulated Geneve traffic.

  • Route lookup or underlay connectivity failure for the tunnel destination.

  • Geneve socket or Open vSwitch datapath problem on the affected host.

  • NIC driver, firmware, or offload issue on the underlay link.

Diagnostic and Remediation Steps

  1. Identify the affected node, Geneve device, and error rate:

    kubectl -n monitoring exec svc/kube-prometheus-stack-prometheus -- \
      promtool query instant http://localhost:9090 \
      '(rate(node_network_transmit_errs_total[5m])
        * on(instance, device) group_left(driver)
        node_ethtool_info{driver="geneve"})'
    
  2. On the node, inspect the Geneve interface reported by the alert:

    ip -d link show <geneve-device>
    

    For OVN/Open vSwitch, the system Geneve device usually appears as genev_sys_<udp-port> and shows geneve external. Other Geneve interfaces, such as Cilium tunnel devices, may also match this alert because the selector intentionally uses the ethtool driver="geneve" label rather than an interface-name convention.

  3. Confirm the underlay MTU is large enough for the encapsulated traffic:

    ip -d link show bond0
    ip -d link show bond0.4092
    

    If the bond MTU is below the fleet-canonical value (typically 9216 on jumbo deployments), correct the netplan or interfaces configuration and reapply, then verify with ip -d link show bond0.

  4. Check for an existing MTU consistency alert, such as CephNodeInconsistentMTU, and compare node_network_mtu_bytes across peers if multiple hosts show the same symptoms.

  5. If MTU is correct, inspect Open vSwitch and the underlay device for datapath or offload failures:

    ovs-appctl dpctl/show -s
    ovs-vsctl show
    ethtool -S bond0
    

GoldpingerHighErrorRate

This alert fires when more than 5% of Goldpinger ping attempts are failing for at least 15 minutes, indicating network connectivity issues across the cluster.

Likely Root Causes

  • Intermittent network connectivity issues

  • DNS resolution failures

  • Firewall rules blocking ICMP or health check traffic

  • Goldpinger pods experiencing resource constraints

  • Node-level network stack issues

Diagnostic and Remediation Steps

  1. Check error rates by node to identify patterns:

    kubectl -n monitoring exec svc/kube-prometheus-stack-prometheus -- \
      promtool query instant http://localhost:9090 \
      'sum by (instance) (rate(goldpinger_errors_total{type="ping"}[5m]))'
    
  2. Verify Goldpinger pods are healthy:

    kubectl -n monitoring get pods -l app.kubernetes.io/name=goldpinger
    kubectl -n monitoring describe pods -l app.kubernetes.io/name=goldpinger
    
  3. Check for any network policies that might be blocking traffic:

    kubectl get networkpolicies --all-namespaces
    
  4. Review Goldpinger logs for specific error messages:

    kubectl -n monitoring logs -l app.kubernetes.io/name=goldpinger --tail=100
    
  5. Check if the errors correlate with specific target nodes by examining which targets have high latency:

    kubectl -n monitoring exec svc/kube-prometheus-stack-prometheus -- \
      promtool query instant http://localhost:9090 \
      'topk(10, histogram_quantile(0.95, sum by (instance, host_ip, le) (rate(goldpinger_peers_response_time_s_bucket{call_type="ping"}[5m]))))'
    

GoldpingerHighPeerLatency

This alert fires when the 95th percentile of Goldpinger peer-to-peer latency exceeds 500ms for at least 15 minutes, indicating network congestion or performance issues.

Likely Root Causes

  • Network congestion on the cluster network

  • Overloaded network switches or routers

  • High CPU or I/O load on nodes causing delayed responses

  • Network interface saturation

  • Incorrect network Quality of Service (QoS) configuration

Diagnostic and Remediation Steps

  1. Check which node pairs have the highest latency:

    kubectl -n monitoring exec svc/kube-prometheus-stack-prometheus -- \
      promtool query instant http://localhost:9090 \
      'topk(10, histogram_quantile(0.95, sum by (instance, host_ip, le) (rate(goldpinger_peers_response_time_s_bucket{call_type="ping"}[5m]))))'
    
  2. Check node-exporter metrics for network saturation:

    kubectl -n monitoring exec svc/kube-prometheus-stack-prometheus -- \
      promtool query instant http://localhost:9090 \
      'rate(node_network_transmit_bytes_total[5m])'
    
  3. Review CPU and I/O wait metrics on affected nodes:

    kubectl -n monitoring exec svc/kube-prometheus-stack-prometheus -- \
      promtool query instant http://localhost:9090 \
      'sum by (instance) (rate(node_cpu_seconds_total{mode="iowait"}[5m]))'
    
  4. Check for network drops which may indicate congestion:

    kubectl -n monitoring exec svc/kube-prometheus-stack-prometheus -- \
      promtool query instant http://localhost:9090 \
      'rate(node_network_receive_drop_total[5m]) > 0'
    
  5. If latency is consistently high between specific node pairs, investigate the network path between them for hardware issues or configuration errors.

GoldpingerHighUnhealthyRatio

This alert fires when more than 10% of nodes in the cluster are reporting as unhealthy according to Goldpinger health checks for at least 5 minutes.

Likely Root Causes

  • Widespread network connectivity issues affecting multiple nodes

  • A network partition isolating a segment of the cluster

  • Multiple nodes experiencing high load or resource exhaustion

  • Infrastructure-level network problems (switch failures, routing issues)

Diagnostic and Remediation Steps

  1. Check the Goldpinger dashboard in Grafana to visualize which nodes are affected and the connectivity patterns.

  2. Query Prometheus to identify which specific nodes are reporting unhealthy:

    kubectl -n monitoring exec svc/kube-prometheus-stack-prometheus -- \
      promtool query instant http://localhost:9090 \
      'goldpinger_nodes_health_total{status="unhealthy"} > 0'
    
  3. Check for network issues on the affected nodes:

    kubectl get nodes -o wide
    kubectl describe node <affected-node>
    
  4. Review node-exporter metrics for network errors or drops:

    kubectl -n monitoring exec svc/kube-prometheus-stack-prometheus -- \
      promtool query instant http://localhost:9090 \
      'rate(node_network_receive_errs_total[5m]) > 0'
    
  5. If the issue affects only specific nodes, check their network configuration and physical connectivity.

GoldpingerNodeUnreachable

This alert fires when more than 50% of Goldpinger instances can’t reach a specific node for at least 5 minutes. The target node may be down or experiencing network issues.

Likely Root Causes

  • The target node is down or unresponsive

  • Network interface failure on the target node

  • Firewall or security group configuration error blocking traffic

  • The Goldpinger pod on the target node has crashed

Diagnostic and Remediation Steps

  1. Identify the affected node by its IP address from the alert labels:

    kubectl get nodes -o wide | grep <host_ip>
    
  2. Check if the node is reachable and healthy:

    kubectl get node <node-name>
    kubectl describe node <node-name>
    
  3. Verify the Goldpinger pod is running on the affected node:

    kubectl -n monitoring get pods -l app.kubernetes.io/name=goldpinger \
      -o wide | grep <node-name>
    
  4. Check network connectivity from another node:

    kubectl debug node/<healthy-node> -it --image=busybox -- \
      ping -c 3 <affected-node-ip>
    
  5. Review system logs on the affected node for network or kernel issues:

    kubectl debug node/<affected-node> -it --image=busybox -- \
      cat /host/var/log/syslog | tail -100
    

IpmiUncorrectableMemoryError

This alert fires when the Intelligent Platform Management Interface (IPMI) exporter reports a recent uncorrectable_memory_error System Event Log (SEL) event. These events indicate a non-recoverable memory error on the host and often require hardware intervention.

Likely Root Causes

  • Failing dual in-line memory module (DIMM) or memory controller

  • Unstable firmware or Basic Input/Output System (BIOS) configuration

  • Recent hardware changes or maintenance introducing faulty memory

Diagnostic and Remediation Steps

  1. Identify the affected host from the alert instance label.

  2. Check the SEL (System Event Log) on the host for uncorrectable memory errors:

    ipmitool sel list | grep -i "uncorrectable"
    
  3. Review system logs for error-correcting code (ECC) or memory errors:

    journalctl -k | grep -i -e ecc -e memory -e edac
    
  4. If the error recurs, replace the failing DIMM (dual in-line memory module) and run a memory test (for example, memtest86) before returning the host to service.

IpmiUnrecoverableCpuError

This alert fires when the IPMI (Intelligent Platform Management Interface) exporter reports a recent unrecoverable_cpu_error SEL (System Event Log) event. These events indicate a fatal CPU error that typically requires hardware intervention and may precede a crash.

Likely Root Causes

  • Failing CPU or socket

  • Hardware instability due to power or thermal issues

  • Firmware or microcode issues

Diagnostic and Remediation Steps

  1. Identify the affected host from the alert instance label.

  2. Check the SEL (System Event Log) on the host for CPU errors:

    ipmitool sel list | grep -i -e "processor" -e "err"
    
  3. Review system logs for machine check or CPU errors:

    journalctl -k | grep -i -e mce -e machine -e cpu
    
  4. Check CPU temperatures and system health:

    ipmitool sdr type temperature
    ipmitool sdr type processor
    
  5. If the error recurs, schedule hardware maintenance and replace the affected CPU or motherboard as needed.

MySQLGaleraOutOfSync

This alert fires when a Percona XtraDB Cluster (PXC) Galera node has a wsrep_local_state that’s not 4 (Synced) and not 2 (Donor), while wsrep_desync isn’t enabled. The alert excludes state 2 (Donor) because it’s a normal transient state during donor operations for State Snapshot Transfer (SST) or PXC operator backups. The separate MySQLGaleraDonorFallingBehind alert covers problematic donor scenarios.

This is a cause-based alert because no reasonable symptom-based proxy exists for a Galera node losing cluster sync. The cluster may continue to serve requests with the remaining nodes, but the reduced quorum margin increases the risk of a full outage if another node fails.

Likely Root Causes

  • A node remains in the Joining state (1) and can’t complete SST.

  • A node completed SST but hasn’t finished catching up (state 3, Joined) for an extended period.

  • Network partitioning prevents the node from rejoining the cluster.

  • Corrupted Galera cache or write-set replication failure.

Diagnostic and Remediation Steps

  1. Check the current wsrep_local_state on the affected node:

    kubectl -n openstack exec -it percona-xtradb-pxc-0 -- \
      mysql -e "SHOW STATUS LIKE 'wsrep_local_state%';"
    
  2. Check overall cluster status:

    kubectl -n openstack exec -it percona-xtradb-pxc-0 -- \
      mysql -e "SHOW STATUS LIKE 'wsrep_cluster%';"
    
  3. Review the PXC pod logs for the affected replica:

    kubectl -n openstack logs percona-xtradb-pxc-<N> --tail=200
    
  4. If the node remains in Joining state, it may need an SST restart. Delete the affected pod to trigger a fresh SST:

    kubectl -n openstack delete pod percona-xtradb-pxc-<N>
    
  5. Verify that no PXC backup runs at the moment (a backup puts a node into Donor state, which the MySQLGaleraDonorFallingBehind alert covers):

    kubectl -n openstack get pxc-backup
    

NodeDiskHighLatency

This alert fires when the average IO latency on a disk device exceeds 20ms for at least 1 hour. It measures the time the kernel spends servicing reads and writes divided by the number of completed operations, which represents the true per-operation latency at the block device layer.

Likely root causes:

  • Failing or degraded SSD or HDD (wear-out, bad sectors, firmware issues)

  • RAID array running in degraded mode after a disk failure

  • Storage controller problems

  • Severely overloaded storage subsystem (too many concurrent IO operations)

  • Incorrect IO scheduler for the workload type

Diagnostic and remediation steps:

  1. Identify the affected host and device from the alert labels (instance and device).

  2. Check the current IO latency and throughput on the affected device:

    iostat -xz 1 5
    
  3. Check for disk errors in the kernel log:

    dmesg | grep -i -E "error|fault|reset|i/o" | tail -30
    
  4. If the device is part of a RAID array, check the array status:

    cat /proc/mdstat
    
  5. Check the SMART health status of the underlying drives:

    smartctl -a /dev/<device>
    
  6. Review whether the host is under unusual IO load:

    iotop -aoP
    
  7. If the disk shows degradation or failure, plan a replacement. For RAID arrays, replace the failed member. For standalone disks, migrate workloads before the disk fails completely.

NodeMemoryHighUtilization

This alert fires when computed node memory utilization exceeds 90% for at least 15 minutes. The calculation uses normal available memory (node_memory_MemAvailable_bytes) plus free huge page capacity (node_memory_HugePages_Free * node_memory_Hugepagesize_bytes), then compares it with total memory. If huge page metrics are absent on a node, the alert automatically falls back to MemAvailable-only behavior. This avoids false positives on compute nodes that intentionally reserve large huge page pools for VM workloads while preserving normal behavior elsewhere.

Likely Root Causes

  • Real host-level memory pressure from application or system processes.

  • Workload density increase that reduced both normal free memory and free huge pages.

  • Memory leak in host services, virtualization daemons, or VM workloads.

  • Unexpected huge page consumption reducing the free huge page pool.

Diagnostic and Remediation Steps

  1. Identify the affected node from the alert instance label.

  2. Validate memory pressure from Prometheus metrics:

    kubectl -n monitoring exec svc/kube-prometheus-stack-prometheus -- \
      promtool query instant http://localhost:9090 \
      '(1 - ((node_memory_MemAvailable_bytes{instance="<instance>",job="node-exporter"} + (node_memory_HugePages_Free{instance="<instance>",job="node-exporter"} * node_memory_Hugepagesize_bytes{instance="<instance>",job="node-exporter"})) / node_memory_MemTotal_bytes{instance="<instance>",job="node-exporter"})) * 100'
    
  3. Inspect current host memory and huge page usage:

    free -h
    grep -E 'HugePages_(Total|Free|Rsvd|Surp)|Hugepagesize' /proc/meminfo
    
  4. Identify the top memory consumers on the host:

    ps aux --sort=-rss | head -20
    
  5. If huge page usage depletes the free pool, investigate VM placement and compute scheduling changes. If normal memory runs out, move workloads, increase host capacity, or resolve memory leaks.

NginxIngressCriticalErrorBudgetBurn

This alert fires when a service behind NGINX Ingress consumes its 30-day error budget at more than 14.4x the sustainable rate, based on a 99.9% availability SLO. It uses multi-window burn-rate detection with 1-hour and 5-minute windows to confirm the issue is both sustained and ongoing. At this burn rate, the entire 30-day error budget exhausts in under 2.1 days. A minimum traffic guard of 1 request per second prevents false positives on low-traffic services.

Likely Root Causes

  • Service pods are crashing or in a crash loop

  • Database connection failures affecting all service replicas

  • Configuration errors in the service deployment

  • Resource exhaustion (CPU, memory, or file descriptors) on service pods

  • Network connectivity failures between NGINX and service pods

  • Service code bugs causing widespread failures

Diagnostic and Remediation Steps

  1. Check the alert labels to identify the affected service and query the current error rate:

    kubectl -n monitoring exec svc/kube-prometheus-stack-prometheus -- \
      promtool query instant http://localhost:9090 \
      'sum by (service) (rate(nginx_ingress_controller_requests{status=~"5[0-9]{2}"}[1h])) / sum by (service) (rate(nginx_ingress_controller_requests[1h]))'
    
  2. Check the health and status of the backend service pods:

    kubectl get pods -A | grep <service-name>
    kubectl describe pod <pod-name> -n <namespace>
    
  3. Review recent logs from the affected service pods:

    kubectl logs -n <namespace> <pod-name> --tail=100
    
  4. Check NGINX Ingress controller logs for upstream connection errors:

    kubectl logs -n ingress-nginx -l app.kubernetes.io/name=ingress-nginx --tail=200
    
  5. Verify resource usage on the backend service pods:

    kubectl top pods -n <namespace> | grep <service-name>
    
  6. If the issue persists, consider scaling the service or restarting affected pods to attempt recovery while investigating the root cause.

NginxIngressHighErrorBudgetBurn

This alert fires when a service behind NGINX Ingress consumes its 30-day error budget at more than 6x the sustainable rate, based on a 99.9% availability SLO. It uses multi-window burn-rate detection with 6-hour and 30-minute windows to confirm the issue is both sustained and ongoing. At this burn rate, the entire 30-day error budget exhausts in under 5 days. A minimum traffic guard of 1 request per second prevents false positives on low-traffic services.

Likely Root Causes

  • Intermittent issues with a subset of service replicas

  • Occasional database query timeouts or connection pool exhaustion

  • Resource pressure on some service pods

  • Networking issues affecting specific nodes or pods

  • Recent deployment causing partial service degradation

  • Cache or session storage issues

Diagnostic and Remediation Steps

  1. Check the current error rate by service:

    kubectl -n monitoring exec svc/kube-prometheus-stack-prometheus -- \
      promtool query instant http://localhost:9090 \
      'sum by (service) (rate(nginx_ingress_controller_requests{status=~"5[0-9]{2}"}[6h])) / sum by (service) (rate(nginx_ingress_controller_requests[6h]))'
    
  2. Identify which specific HTTP error codes the service returns:

    kubectl -n monitoring exec svc/kube-prometheus-stack-prometheus -- \
      promtool query instant http://localhost:9090 \
      'sum by (service, status) (rate(nginx_ingress_controller_requests{status=~"5[0-9]{2}"}[30m]))'
    
  3. Check for unhealthy or recently restarted pods:

    kubectl get pods -A | grep <service-name>
    kubectl get events -n <namespace> --sort-by='.lastTimestamp' | grep <service-name>
    
  4. Review application logs for errors:

    kubectl logs -n <namespace> -l app=<service-name> --tail=100 | grep -i error
    
  5. Check if the error rate correlates with increased load or specific API endpoints by examining the NGINX Ingress metrics in Grafana.

  6. Verify database connectivity and performance if the service depends on a database:

    kubectl exec -it <pod-name> -n <namespace> -- <database-client> -e "SHOW PROCESSLIST;"
    

NginxIngressLowErrorBudgetBurn

This alert fires when a service behind NGINX Ingress consumes its 30-day error budget at the sustainable rate or faster, based on a 99.9% availability SLO. It uses multi-window burn-rate detection with 3-day and 6-hour windows to confirm the issue is both sustained and ongoing. At this burn rate, the 30-day error budget exhausts before the window resets. A minimum traffic guard of 1 request per second prevents false positives on low-traffic services.

Likely Root Causes

  • Degrading dependency (database, cache, or external service)

  • Gradual resource leak causing occasional failures

  • Configuration drift across replicas

  • Intermittent infrastructure issues during off-peak hours

  • Elevated baseline error rate after a deployment

Diagnostic and Remediation Steps

  1. Check the error rate trend over the last 3 days:

    kubectl -n monitoring exec svc/kube-prometheus-stack-prometheus -- \
      promtool query instant http://localhost:9090 \
      'sum by (service) (rate(nginx_ingress_controller_requests{status=~"5[0-9]{2}"}[3d])) / sum by (service) (rate(nginx_ingress_controller_requests[3d]))'
    
  2. Compare the error rate with the previous period to identify when it started increasing by examining trends in Grafana dashboards.

  3. Review recent deployments or configuration changes that correlate with the error rate increase:

    kubectl get events -n <namespace> --sort-by='.lastTimestamp' | head -50
    
  4. Check if specific error codes dominate:

    kubectl -n monitoring exec svc/kube-prometheus-stack-prometheus -- \
      promtool query instant http://localhost:9090 \
      'sum by (service, status) (rate(nginx_ingress_controller_requests{status=~"5[0-9]{2}"}[6h]))'
    
  5. Investigate resource usage and dependency health for the affected service.

NginxIngressModerateErrorBudgetBurn

This alert fires when a service behind NGINX Ingress consumes its 30-day error budget at more than 3x the sustainable rate, based on a 99.9% availability SLO. It uses multi-window burn-rate detection with 1-day and 2-hour windows to confirm the issue is both sustained and ongoing. At this burn rate, the entire 30-day error budget exhausts in under 10 days. A minimum traffic guard of 1 request per second prevents false positives on low-traffic services.

Likely Root Causes

  • A subset of service replicas returning errors intermittently

  • Slow database queries causing periodic timeouts

  • Resource contention during peak traffic periods

  • Partial deployment with a faulty version still in rotation

  • Upstream dependency experiencing intermittent issues

Diagnostic and Remediation Steps

  1. Check the error rate over the last day:

    kubectl -n monitoring exec svc/kube-prometheus-stack-prometheus -- \
      promtool query instant http://localhost:9090 \
      'sum by (service) (rate(nginx_ingress_controller_requests{status=~"5[0-9]{2}"}[1d])) / sum by (service) (rate(nginx_ingress_controller_requests[1d]))'
    
  2. Identify which error codes the service returns:

    kubectl -n monitoring exec svc/kube-prometheus-stack-prometheus -- \
      promtool query instant http://localhost:9090 \
      'sum by (service, status) (rate(nginx_ingress_controller_requests{status=~"5[0-9]{2}"}[2h]))'
    
  3. Check for unhealthy pods or recent restarts:

    kubectl get pods -A | grep <service-name>
    kubectl get events -n <namespace> --sort-by='.lastTimestamp' | grep <service-name>
    
  4. Review application logs for recurring errors:

    kubectl logs -n <namespace> -l app=<service-name> --tail=200 | grep -i error
    
  5. Check if errors correlate with traffic patterns or specific time windows in Grafana.

  6. Review recent deployments or configuration changes that might have introduced the issue.

NodeNetworkMulticast

This alert fires when a node receives large volumes of multicast traffic, which can indicate an incorrectly configured network or a malicious actor.

This can result in high CPU usage on the node and can cause the node to become unresponsive. It can also cause a high amount of software interrupts on the node.

To find the root cause of this issue, use the following commands:

iftop -ni $DEV -f 'multicast and not broadcast'

With this command, you can see which IP addresses send the multicast traffic. Once you have the IP address, use the following command to find the server behind it:

openstack server list --all-projects --long -n --ip $IP

SmartctlDiskAttributeFailing

This alert fires when a SMART attribute’s normalized value drops at or below the per-attribute failure threshold the drive firmware itself defines (smartctl_device_attribute{attribute_value_type="value"} is <= the matching thresh, where thresh > 0). The drive itself declares one of its prefailure attributes has crossed into the failing zone. Common cases are end-of-life wear indicators on SATA SSDs and reallocation or pending-sector counters whose normalized values have decayed below the firmware threshold. Suppressed when SmartctlDiskUnhealthy already fires for the same disk.

Likely Root Causes

  • SATA SSD wear-out (vendor wearout indicator below threshold)

  • Sustained reallocation pressure dropping the normalized Reallocated_Sector_Ct value

  • Any vendor-specific prefailure attribute the drive deems failing

Diagnostic and Remediation Steps

  1. Identify the affected disk and attribute from the alert labels (instance, device, attribute_id, attribute_name).

  2. Inspect all SMART attributes and note any flagged FAILING_NOW:

    smartctl -A /dev/<device>
    
  3. Cross-check with SmartctlDiskUnhealthy: if both fire, the overall SMART status is also failing. Replace the drive immediately.

  4. If only this alert fires, the drive is still functional but the firmware predicts the attribute will continue to degrade. Plan replacement during the next maintenance window.

SmartctlDiskAvailableSpareLow

This alert fires when an NVMe drive’s available_spare percentage drops below the manufacturer-defined available_spare_threshold. NVMe drives maintain a pool of spare blocks for media defects. Once that pool nears exhaustion the controller marks the drive at risk of imminent failure.

Likely Root Causes

  • The drive is at end-of-life from sustained writes

  • The drive has experienced an unusually high number of bad blocks

  • Firmware degradation tracking the drive itself classifies as critical

Diagnostic and Remediation Steps

  1. Identify the affected disk from the alert labels (instance and device).

  2. Review the spare and threshold values:

    smartctl -a /dev/<device> | grep -iE 'available_spare'
    
  3. Cross-check the NVMe critical_warning field, which the controller sets in parallel:

    smartctl -a /dev/<device> | grep -i 'critical warning'
    
  4. Migrate any data off the disk and order an emergency replacement. Don’t wait for the next maintenance window.

SmartctlDiskCriticalWarning

This alert fires when an NVMe drive’s critical_warning bitfield is non-zero. The controller sets bits to indicate available spare below threshold, temperature over critical, NVM subsystem reliability degraded, media in read-only mode, or volatile-memory backup failed. Any non-zero value is the manufacturer’s own signal that the drive is unsafe.

Likely Root Causes

  • Available spare exhausted (bit 0)

  • Temperature exceeded the drive’s own critical threshold (bit 1)

  • NVM subsystem reliability degraded (bit 2)

  • Media in read-only mode (bit 3)

  • Volatile-memory backup device failed (bit 4)

Diagnostic and Remediation Steps

  1. Identify the affected disk from the alert labels (instance and device).

  2. Decode the active bit:

    smartctl -a /dev/<device> | grep -iA1 'critical warning'
    
  3. Address the underlying cause: cooling for temperature, replacement for reliability/media-read-only/spare-exhausted.

  4. Migrate data and replace the drive. Treat any non-zero critical_warning as an imminent-failure signal.

SmartctlDiskMediaErrorsGrowing

This alert fires when an NVMe drive’s media_errors counter increased over the last 24 hours. The counter records occurrences where the controller couldn’t recover data via ECC. A stable non-zero count from historical events is harmless, but ongoing growth means the media is actively degrading.

Likely Root Causes

  • Media wear at end-of-life

  • A bad NAND die or controller bug

  • Sustained high temperatures damaging cells

Diagnostic and Remediation Steps

  1. Identify the affected disk from the alert labels (instance and device).

  2. Confirm the current count and trend:

    smartctl -a /dev/<device> | grep -i 'media.*errors'
    
  3. Compare with smartctl_device_percentage_used to decide whether wear-out or a localized fault is the cause.

  4. Schedule replacement during the next maintenance window. If the rate of growth is high, escalate to immediate replacement.

SmartctlDiskPendingSectorsGrowing

This alert fires when a SATA drive’s Current_Pending_Sector (attribute 197) grew over the last 24 hours. A stable non-zero count is harmless. The drive remaps those sectors on the next write attempt. Ongoing growth indicates active media degradation: the drive is encountering new sectors it can’t read or write reliably.

Likely Root Causes

  • Physical wear on platters or NAND cells

  • Mechanical shock or vibration

  • Read disturb errors on busy SSD blocks

Diagnostic and Remediation Steps

  1. Identify the affected disk from the alert labels (instance and device).

  2. Check the current pending count and other reallocation attributes:

    smartctl -A /dev/<device> | grep -iE 'pending|reallocated|uncorrectable'
    
  3. Run a long self-test to force reallocation attempts:

    smartctl -t long /dev/<device>
    
  4. Re-check after the test completes (typically a few hours). If pending sectors continue to grow, schedule replacement.

SmartctlDiskReallocatedSectorsGrowing

This alert fires when a SATA drive’s Reallocated_Sector_Ct (attribute 5) grew over the last 24 hours. A stable non-zero value (for example, factory remapping) is harmless, but ongoing growth means the drive is actively remapping new bad sectors.

Likely Root Causes

  • Physical wear or age-related degradation

  • Mechanical shock or vibration

  • Overheating causing intermittent write failures

Diagnostic and Remediation Steps

  1. Identify the affected disk from the alert labels (instance and device).

  2. Check the current count and trend:

    smartctl -A /dev/<device> | grep -iE 'reallocated|pending'
    
  3. Plan replacement during the next maintenance window. If the count is accelerating, escalate to an unplanned replacement.

SmartctlDiskScsiGrownDefectsGrowing

This alert fires when a SCSI/SAS drive’s grown defect list (smartctl_scsi_grown_defect_list) gains entries over the last 24 hours. A stable non-zero count is harmless. Ongoing growth means the drive is actively reallocating bad blocks. This alert is the SAS analog of SmartctlDiskReallocatedSectorsGrowing.

Likely Root Causes

  • Mechanical wear on SAS HDD platters

  • Vibration or shock damage

  • Approaching end of rated life

Diagnostic and Remediation Steps

  1. Identify the affected disk from the alert labels (instance and device).

  2. Review the defect list and SMART attributes:

    smartctl -a /dev/<device>
    
  3. Plan replacement during the next maintenance window. Escalate if growth is accelerating or if SmartctlDiskScsiUncorrectedErrors also fires for the same drive.

SmartctlDiskScsiUncorrectedErrors

This alert fires when a SCSI/SAS drive’s read or write total-uncorrected-error counter (smartctl_read_total_uncorrected_errors / smartctl_write_total_uncorrected_errors) increases over the last 24 hours. Any non-zero growth means the drive couldn’t recover I/O via on-disk ECC, confirming data loss in the affected blocks.

Likely Root Causes

  • Severe media degradation

  • Mechanical or electronics fault

  • SAS bus errors hammering the drive

Diagnostic and Remediation Steps

  1. Identify the affected disk from the alert labels (instance and device).

  2. Inspect the SCSI error counter log and overall health:

    smartctl -l error /dev/<device>
    smartctl -a /dev/<device>
    
  3. Migrate any data off the disk and replace it. Don’t return the drive to service.

SmartctlDiskSelfTestFailed

This alert fires when a SATA drive reports one or more entries in its SMART self-test error log. Even one failed self-test indicates the drive couldn’t complete an internal integrity check. The upstream smartctl_exporter only emits this metric for ATA/SATA drives. NVMe self-test results aren’t surfaced.

Likely Root Causes

  • Bad sectors detected during the self-test

  • Mechanical or electronics fault

  • Drive firmware or controller errors

Diagnostic and Remediation Steps

  1. Identify the affected disk from the alert labels (instance and device).

  2. Review the self-test log:

    smartctl -l selftest /dev/<device>
    
  3. Run a fresh self-test to confirm the failure:

    smartctl -t long /dev/<device>
    
  4. If failures persist, plan replacement during the next maintenance window.

SmartctlDiskTemperatureHigh

This alert fires when a disk’s current temperature exceeds 65°C sustained for at least one hour. Brief spikes during heavy I/O are normal, especially on NVMe drives, but sustained high temperatures accelerate flash memory wear and can cause data loss or mechanical failure.

Likely Root Causes

  • Inadequate server cooling or airflow around the disk bay

  • Failed or degraded cooling fans

  • High ambient temperature in the data center

  • Sustained heavy workload with insufficient cooling

Diagnostic and Remediation Steps

  1. Identify the affected disk from the alert labels (instance and device).

  2. Check current and historical temperatures:

    smartctl -a /dev/<device> | grep -i temperature
    
  3. Check the server’s fan speeds via IPMI:

    ipmitool sdr type Fan
    
  4. Inspect airflow paths for obstruction. Verify that the disk bay isn’t blocked.

  5. If ambient temperature has risen, escalate to facilities.

SmartctlDiskUncorrectableSectorsGrowing

This alert fires when a SATA drive’s Offline_Uncorrectable (attribute 198) grew over the last 24 hours. A stable non-zero count is harmless because those sectors represent already-acknowledged bad blocks. Ongoing growth means the drive is finding new sectors it can’t recover during background scans, indicating confirmed unrecoverable data loss in newly affected LBAs.

Likely Root Causes

  • Physical damage to platters

  • Severe NAND wear

  • Mechanical shock

Diagnostic and Remediation Steps

  1. Identify the affected disk from the alert labels (instance and device).

  2. Determine which files (if any) live on the affected sectors:

    smartctl -a /dev/<device>
    
  3. Check filesystem integrity (offline if necessary):

    fsck -nv /dev/<device>
    
  4. Migrate any data off the disk and replace it. Don’t return the drive to service.

SmartctlDiskUnhealthy

This alert fires when a disk fails its SMART overall-health self-assessment (smartctl_device_smart_status == 0). The drive firmware predicts imminent failure. Replace the disk immediately to prevent data loss.

Likely Root Causes

  • The disk has exceeded its rated endurance

  • Reallocated, pending, or uncorrectable sector counts crossed the manufacturer’s critical threshold

  • Catastrophic hardware failure or firmware corruption

Diagnostic and Remediation Steps

  1. Identify the affected disk from the alert labels (instance and device).

  2. Verify SMART health and review all attributes:

    smartctl -H /dev/<device>
    smartctl -a /dev/<device>
    
  3. Migrate data immediately to a healthy replica. Don’t defer.

  4. Order an emergency replacement; don’t wait for a maintenance window.

SmartctlDiskWearoutCritical

This alert fires when an NVMe drive reports more than 90% of its rated endurance used (smartctl_device_percentage_used > 90) sustained for at least 15 minutes. At this wear level the manufacturer considers near-term failure likely. SmartctlDiskAttributeFailing covers SATA drives instead, since they expose wear via vendor-specific normalized attributes rather than percentage_used.

Likely Root Causes

  • The disk has been in heavy write workloads for an extended period

  • A workload exceeded the disk’s rated endurance (write amplification)

  • The disk is approaching end of its rated lifetime

Diagnostic and Remediation Steps

  1. Identify the affected disk from the alert labels (instance and device).

  2. Confirm the wear level:

    smartctl -a /dev/<device> | grep -i percentage_used
    
  3. Review workload sizing. If the workload exceeded the disk’s rated endurance, plan a higher-endurance class for the replacement.

  4. Order a replacement. Schedule replacement during the next maintenance window, sooner if SmartctlDiskUnhealthy also fires.

SmartctlDiskWearoutWarning

This alert fires when an NVMe drive reports more than 75% of its rated endurance used (smartctl_device_percentage_used > 75) sustained for at least one hour. The drive still operates within specification but is approaching end of life. Suppressed automatically when SmartctlDiskWearoutCritical fires for the same disk. SmartctlDiskAttributeFailing covers SATA drives instead.

Likely Root Causes

  • The disk has been in heavy write workloads for an extended period

  • A workload exceeded the disk’s rated endurance (write amplification)

Diagnostic and Remediation Steps

  1. Identify the affected disk from the alert labels (instance and device).

  2. Check the wear trend in Grafana or Prometheus to estimate time to failure.

  3. Plan a replacement during the next scheduled maintenance window.