Diagnose overloaded Kubernetes cluster

Q: Diagnose overloaded Kubernetes cluster

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Question

Kubernetes Overload: End-to-End Debug + Mitigation Plan

You are given a Kubernetes-based microservices system that is currently overloaded, exhibiting high tail latency (p95/p99), request timeouts, and autoscaling thrash (rapid scale up/down). Design an end-to-end approach to debug and mitigate the incident.

Provide:

What to inspect
- Metrics (cluster, service, dependencies), logs, and distributed traces to examine.
Tools and commands
- The tools and concrete commands/queries you would use (e.g., kubectl, Prometheus/Grafana, OpenTelemetry/Jaeger, service mesh/ingress, cloud vendor tools).
Hypotheses to test
- Specific, testable root-cause hypotheses for overload and how you'd validate or falsify them.
Immediate mitigations
- Safe, rapid steps to stabilize the system and reduce user impact.
Longer-term fixes
- Sustainable changes to prevent recurrence (architecture, autoscaling, limits, observability, SLOs).

Assume a typical setup with: Kubernetes, Horizontal Pod Autoscaler (HPA), a metrics stack (e.g., Prometheus/Grafana), logs (e.g., centralized logging), and tracing (e.g., OpenTelemetry + Jaeger/Tempo). If a component is missing, state a pragmatic alternative.

Diagnose overloaded Kubernetes cluster

Kubernetes Overload: End-to-End Debug + Mitigation Plan

Solution

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