Podman Containers Performance Test

The container agent running with root privileges cannot directly monitor rootless containers, eG Enterprise now has enhanced support to track and monitor rootless workloads effectively. This ensures that users can still gain visibility into resource usage, performance metrics, and learn about potential issues in their rootless Podman environments as well.

By default, the containers use a certain amount of CPU and memory resources. Sometimes, a single container may end up hogging CPU and memory resources leaving the rest of the containers with no available resources. To isolate such resource hogging containers, it is necessary to periodically monitor the resource utilization of the containers. The Podman Containers Performance test helps administrators in this regard!

For each container launched using the target Podman container engine, this test reports the resource utilization in the container. Using this test, administrators can identify resource-intensive containers, analyze the root-cause of such high resource utilization and rectify the same at the earliest.

Target of the test : A Podman Container Engine

Agent deploying the test : An internal agent

Outputs of the test : One set of results for each container available in the Podman Container Engine 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	The port number at which the specified host listens. The default is 2375.
Use SUDO	By default, this flag is set to No. This indicates that, by default, this test will report the metrics of this test by executing the crictl command. However, in some highly secure environments, the eG agent install user may not have the permissions to execute this command directly. In such cases, do the following: Edit the SUDOERS file on the target host and append an entry of the following format to it: <eG_agent_install_user> ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD:<Command> For instance, if the eG agent install user is eguser, then the entries in the sudoers file should be: eguser ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD: crictl Finally, save the file. Then, when configuring the test using the eG admin interface, set this parameter to Yes. This will enable the eG agent to execute the sudo crictl command and retrieve the relevant metrics for this test.
Detailed Diagnosis	To make diagnosis more efficient and accurate, the eG Enterprise embeds an optional detailed diagnostic capability. With this capability, the eG agents can be configured to run detailed, more elaborate tests as and when specific problems are detected. To enable the detailed diagnosis capability of this test for a particular server, choose the On option. To disable the capability, click on the Off option. The option to selectively enable/disable the detailed diagnosis capability will be available only if the following conditions are fulfilled: The eG manager license should allow the detailed diagnosis capability Both the normal and abnormal frequencies configured for the detailed diagnosis measures should not be 0.

Measurements made by the test
Measurement	Description	Measurement Unit	Interpretation
CPU utilization	Indicates the percentage of CPU utilized by this container.	Percent	Comparing the value of this measure across the containers will enable you to accurately identify the container on which CPU-intensive applications are executing.
Total memory	Indicates the total memory capacity of this container.	MB
Used memory	Indicates the amount of memory that is currently utilized by this container.	MB	If the value of this measure is close to the Total memory measure, then, it indicates that the disk is running out of space.
Free memory	Indicates amount of memory space that is available for use in this container.	MB	Ideally, this value should be low. A consistent increase in this value could be indicative of a potential memory contention.
Memory utilization	Indicates the amount of memory utilized by this container.	MB	A high value for this measure indicates that the memory resource of the container is depleting alarmingly. Compare the value of this measure across containers to figure out the container that is using maximum amount of memory resources.
Incoming network traffic	Indicates the rate at which packets were received by this container.	Pkts/sec	A significant increase or decrease in the value of this measure may alter traffic condition.
Outgoing network traffic	Indicates the rate at which packets were transmitted by this container.	Pkts/sec
Blocks read rate	Indicates the rate at which data was read in blocks from this container.	MB/sec	A high value of this measure is a good indicator of read I/O processing ability of the container.
Blocks write rate	Indicates the rate at which data was written in blocks to this container.	MB/sec	A high value of this measure is a good indicator of write I/O processing ability of the container.