kube-state-metrics vs metrics-server vs cAdvisor vs node_exporter
· 7 min read
Kubernetes metrics come from four places, and their names look alike. kube_pod_container_resource_limits, container_memory_working_set_bytes, node_memory_MemAvailable_bytes and the numbers in kubectl top all sound like they describe the same thing. They are made by different components and they answer different questions. Only three of the four are meant for monitoring.
This post explains what each component measures and how to tell which one a metric came from. It also covers the renames that make a query copied from a 2019 blog post return nothing.