Three corrections after rebasing onto main. 1. THE GUARD CAUGHT A REAL ONE ON ITS FIRST CONTACT WITH main. main had gained `CNPGPrimariesCoLocated` (platform/cnpg/alerts.yaml) pointing at /runbooks/cnpg-primary-spread, with no runbook. The check failed the rebase exactly as designed — 46 annotations, 35 names, 34 present — naming both the missing file AND the missing configMapGenerator entry. runbooks/cnpg-primary-spread.md now exists: what co-located primaries actually cost here (blast radius, not an outage, because instances: 3 + required anti-affinity), why the drift is uncorrectable-by-declaration (CNPG has no primary-placement field), the readiness gate that keeps the rule quiet during a real node outage, and the ~9s-per-database switchover rebalance, one cluster at a time. The 2026-09-07 outage in which all three primaries sat on one node is the reason the alert exists at all. 2. WHOLE-REPO SCOPE, NOT A HAND-WRITTEN STAGE. main's refactor replaced ci/l0.sh's per-check "UNCONDITIONAL" stages with a declaration: `conformance.home.k3s/scope: "whole-repo"`, unioned into every gate run by Stage 3b's `--include-scope`. My +38-line Stage 3f is removed (ci/l0.sh is now byte-identical to main) and the annotation is declared instead. Assertion (7) of the check was rewritten to match: it no longer asserts its own path appears in ci/l0.sh — it asserts the test DECLARES the scope and that ci/l0.sh still passes --include-scope, since neither half alone makes the check load-bearing. That matters here because ci/touched-requirements.sh maps platform/monitoring/* to "R-OBS-01 R-OBS-02", not R-OBS-04, and maps platform/kubevirt/* and runbooks/* to nothing at all. 3. A FACTUAL CORRECTION IN ALL 35 RUNBOOKS. Every page claimed `dev.sh` defaults its current-context to k3s-dev. main's `9b4744d fix(devcontainer): dev.sh defaults to prod` made that false, and a runbook that misstates which cluster a command talks to is worse than one that says nothing. The pages now say what is durably true: the default has already changed once, so naming `--context k3s-prod` is what makes a command mean the same thing next month, and the per-invocation banner is there to be read. The check's own failure message was corrected the same way. Re-verified after all three: check green at 374 assertions (46 annotations, 35/35 runbooks present, 35/35 projected), re-applied to prod, and re-probed in-cluster through the Gateway — node-down, keycloak-down, keycloak-client-secrets, cnpg-archiving, longhorn-faulted, vpn-down, node-io and cnpg-primary-spread all HTTP 200 with text/plain; charset=utf-8 and 8.9-12.1 KB of real body; /runbooks/ index 200; an unknown name 404s with a pointer rather than a blank page; and homepage still answers the apex `/`, confirming Gateway API longest-path precedence. Full merge gate: PASS (spec-immutability, lint, l0, render-golden, l1 all green; prom-rules SKIPPED for want of promtool in the image; L2/L3 SKIPPED, no cluster). Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <[email protected]>
9.1 KiB
backup-missed — No successful Velero backup in 24 hours
Alert: VeleroNoRecentBackup (critical, 1h)
File: platform/monitoring/alerts.yaml, group platform-health.backups
Expression: (time() - velero_backup_last_successful_timestamp{schedule!=""}) > (24 * 3600)
What this means here
A Velero schedule has not produced a successful backup in over a day. This is the alert that catches
the quiet failure — not "a backup broke" (that is /runbooks/backup-failure) but "backups stopped
happening and nobody noticed". The {schedule!=""} filter means it only watches scheduled backups, so
ad-hoc ones do not mask a dead schedule.
Live shape on prod: two schedules, both 0 3 * * * —
schedule.velero.io/velero-daily and schedule.velero.io/velero-daily-resources-only — retention
720h, target Cloudflare R2 (bucket k3s-prod-backup, prefix velero, region auto).
Why this alert is worth its critical: the precedent is that these rules could not fire at all.
Velero shipped with three backup alerts and the chart default metrics.serviceMonitor.enabled: false,
confirmed live on prod — kubectl -n velero get servicemonitor returned no resources. Recorded verbatim:
"A nightly backup could fail — or silently stop running — for weeks with nothing to say so." The
ServiceMonitor now exists (velero and velero/node-agent are both live scrape jobs as of 2026-09-13),
which is the only reason this alert is real.
READ THIS BEFORE YOU CONCLUDE THE BACKUPS ARE GONE
kubectl get backup -A prints "No resources found" on this cluster even when backups exist.
Three CRDs register the kind Backup — longhorn.io/v1beta2, postgresql.cnpg.io/v1 and
velero.io/v1 — and the bare short name resolves to Longhorn's, which holds zero objects. Verified
on prod 2026-09-13: the fully-qualified queries returned 6 Velero backups and 27 CNPG backups
while the short name returned nothing. This false negative has already produced two wrong "the backups
are missing" conclusions in one night. A destructive recovery action taken on it is how a CLI quirk
becomes real data loss. Always:
backups.velero.io backups.postgresql.cnpg.io backups.longhorn.io
schedules.velero.io scheduledbackups.postgresql.cnpg.io clusters.postgresql.cnpg.io
Running the commands in this runbook
kubectl does not work on the operator workstation. The toolchain lives only in the pinned dev
container, and the host's k3s-oidc context hangs on a browser prompt once its token expires —
that hang is not the cluster being down. Every command below runs as:
infra/devcontainer/dev.sh run bash -c 'kubectl --context k3s-prod get nodes'
Always pass --context k3s-prod explicitly. dev.sh merges BOTH clusters into one kubeconfig and
picks a current-context per invocation, and that default has already changed once — it was k3s-dev
until dev was decommissioned on 2026-09-13, and is k3s-prod now. A command that names its context means
the same thing next month as it does today; one that relies on the default does not, and the failure is
silent (it answers confidently about the other cluster). CLUSTER=prod infra/devcontainer/dev.sh run kubectl ... selects it explicitly, and every invocation prints a banner naming the cluster it is about
to talk to — read it. Do not run two dev.sh invocations at once; they share one container and
interfere.
USE FULLY-QUALIFIED RESOURCE NAMES, ALWAYS. Three CRDs on this cluster register the kind Backup:
longhorn.io/v1beta2, postgresql.cnpg.io/v1 and velero.io/v1. The bare short name resolves to
Longhorn's, which holds zero objects — so kubectl get backup -A prints "No resources found" on
a cluster holding 6 Velero backups and 27 CNPG backups. Verified on prod 2026-09-13. Reading that as
"the backups are gone" and acting on it turns a false negative into real data loss. Write
backups.velero.io, backups.postgresql.cnpg.io, clusters.postgresql.cnpg.io,
settings.longhorn.io, volumes.longhorn.io, nodes.longhorn.io.
Mutating kubectl (apply, patch, annotate, rollout) and flux reconcile are blocked for
agents here: every durable change goes through git (git push origin main is the deploy).
Where this runbook gives a mutating command it is for an operator, and it says so.
First commands
Are the schedules enabled, and when did each last run?
infra/devcontainer/dev.sh run bash -c \
'kubectl --context k3s-prod -n velero get schedules.velero.io \
-o custom-columns=NAME:.metadata.name,SCHEDULE:.spec.schedule,PAUSED:.spec.paused,LASTBACKUP:.status.lastBackup,PHASE:.status.phase'
What backups actually exist (fully-qualified — the short name lies):
infra/devcontainer/dev.sh run bash -c \
'kubectl --context k3s-prod get backups.velero.io -A \
-o custom-columns=NAME:.metadata.name,PHASE:.status.phase,SCHEDULE:.metadata.labels.velero\\.io/schedule-name,START:.status.startTimestamp --sort-by=.status.startTimestamp'
Is the storage location usable at all?
infra/devcontainer/dev.sh run bash -c \
'kubectl --context k3s-prod -n velero get backupstoragelocations.velero.io \
-o custom-columns=NAME:.metadata.name,PHASE:.status.phase,LASTVALIDATED:.status.lastValidationTime,DEFAULT:.spec.default'
Is Velero's own Flux tier reconciling, or was it suspended?
infra/devcontainer/dev.sh run bash -c \
'kubectl --context k3s-prod get kustomizations.kustomize.toolkit.fluxcd.io -A \
-o custom-columns=NAME:.metadata.name,SUSPENDED:.spec.suspend,READY:.status.conditions[?\(@.type==\"Ready\"\)].status | grep -Ei "velero|NAME"'
And the controller:
infra/devcontainer/dev.sh run bash -c \
'kubectl --context k3s-prod -n velero get pods; \
kubectl --context k3s-prod -n velero logs deploy/velero --tail=120 2>&1 | tail -40'
Likely causes, most likely first
1. The Velero Flux tier was suspended and nobody resumed it
This has happened: Velero was found suspended live, with the suspension never recorded in git, and
was resumed with flux resume. A suspended backup controller is a silent DR gap and is precisely the
class this alert exists for. Remediation (operator): flux resume kustomization velero, and see
/runbooks/flux-suspended for why an undocumented live suspension is itself a problem.
2. The schedule is paused
schedules.velero.io has spec.paused. Note from the live listing that
velero-daily-resources-only shows an empty PAUSED column while velero-daily shows false — read the
field, not the column width. A paused schedule is a git change to unpause.
3. Every run is failing rather than not running
Then backups.velero.io will show recent Failed entries and this alert is a downstream symptom. Go to
/runbooks/backup-failure — and in particular check the plugin pin
(velero/velero-plugin-for-aws:v1.14.3-rc.2), because the R2 tagging bug produces exactly this: volume
data uploads, the backup goes Failed, and no successful backup ever lands.
4. The BackupStorageLocation is not Available
A wrong endpoint, a bad credential, or the placeholder. clusters/prod deliberately carried the loud
placeholder https://TBD-R2-ACCOUNT-ID.r2.cloudflarestorage.com rather than inheriting the base (dev)
value, because "an omitted op means prod silently inherits a dev address — far worse than a failed
apply". Check S3_BACKUP_ENDPOINT, S3_BACKUP_REGION (auto), VELERO_BACKUP_BUCKET,
VELERO_BACKUP_PREFIX, BACKUP_CREDENTIALS_SUFFIX (-prod).
5. Velero cannot schedule a pod
Node pressure, or the node-agent DaemonSet unhealthy. Cross-read /runbooks/node-io.
6. The metric, not the backup, is missing
If velero_backup_last_successful_timestamp has no series at all the rule cannot fire — which is the
historical state. Confirm the velero scrape job is up (/runbooks/targets-down) before trusting either
its silence or its firing.
When to escalate or stop
- Escalate: this is a DR alarm and 24h is already a real window of exposure.
- Do not create an ad-hoc backup and consider the alert answered. The expression filters
{schedule!=""}, so a manual backup will not clear it, and more importantly it does not fix the schedule. (An operator's ad-hoc run for reassurance isvelero backup create --from-schedule velero-daily.) - Do not conclude "no backups exist" from
kubectl get backup. See the trap above. - Remember the databases are separate.
keycloak-db,nextcloud-dbandsemaphore-dbare covered by CNPG's Barman archive, not by Velero. This alert being clear says nothing about them, and vice versa — check/runbooks/cnpg-backup-missedtoo. - Be honest about restore:
dr-restoreis authored and has never been executed, so the R2 restore path is unrehearsed. Free R2 egress makes a rehearsal cheap; it is still outstanding.
Source of truth: runbooks/backup-missed.md. Index: /runbooks/
Records: commit 2d5171e (Velero had no ServiceMonitor, so these alerts could never fire);
DECISIONS-LOG.md (Velero found suspended with the suspension never in git; dr-restore never
executed); commit 32d6766 (R2 decision and endpoint knobs).