Controller Manager Process Test

The Kubernetes Controller Manager is a core control plane component that runs processes to ensure the cluster's desired state matches its actual state. It manages controllers like Node, Deployment, Job, and Endpoints. These controllers continuously monitor resources through the API Server and reconcile changes, handling tasks like scaling, rolling updates, and failed node recovery for smooth cluster operations.

Monitoring the Controller Manager process is crucial to ensure resource reconciliation, scaling, and failover tasks are functioning properly. Failures in this process can disrupt workloads, scaling, or recovery operations. Regular health checks allow early detection of issues, helping maintain cluster stability, resource alignment, and smooth application performance in Kubernetes.

The Controller Manager Process Test continuously monitors the Controller process in the target node and reports key metrics like user and system CPU time spent, file descriptor details etc. These metrics are invaluable for the administrators to ensure that service is up and prevent any issues in case service has problems.

Target of the test : A Kubernetes Master Node

Agent deploying the test : A remote agent

Outputs of the test : One set of results for the target Kubernetes Master node being monitored

Configurable parameters for the test

Parameter	Description
Test Period	How often should the test be executed.
Host	The IP address of the host for which this test is to be configured.
Port	Specify the port at which the specified Host listens. By default, this is 6443.
Timeout	Specify the duration (in seconds) beyond which the test will timeout in the Timeout text box. The default value is 10 seconds.
Metric URL	Each of the Kubernetes system components expose monitoring metrics through /metrics endpoint of the HTTP server. For components that don't expose endpoint by default, refer official Kubernetes distribution documentation site. Specify the metric URL textbox.

Measurements made by the test

Measurement	Description	Measurement Unit	Interpretation
Total CPU time spent	Indicates the CPU time consumed by the Kubernetes Controller Manager process.	Milliseconds	Time spent executing code in user mode, such as processing requests, running algorithms, and performing operations in the application itself.
Number of open file descriptors	Indicates the highest number of files or resources the Kubernetes Controller Manager process can open simultaneously.	Number
Maximum allowed open file descriptors	Indicates the number of files or resources the Kubernetes Controller Manager process has open currently.	Number
Open file descriptors usage	Indicates the number of files or resources the Kubernetes Controller Manager process has open currently and are in use.	%	Monitoring the file descriptor count helps identify when the process is nearing resource limits, potentially causing service disruptions, latency, or failures.