jakman85andClaude Opus 5
44983095e1
Every platform-health alert rule carries `runbook_url: "https://${BASE_DOMAIN}/runbooks/<name>"` — 42 annotations over 34 distinct names, across platform/monitoring/alerts.yaml, platform/monitoring/pvc-capacity-alerts.yaml, platform/cnpg/alerts.yaml and platform/kubevirt/alerts.yaml. There was no runbooks/ directory and no HTTPRoute serving that path: an in-cluster probe of https://home.keithjackson.dev/runbooks/node-down returned HTTP 404. Every alert that reached a human handed them a dead link at the exact moment the documentation is read, and the annotation made it look solved — the same green-surface-over-absent-mechanism class as the import Job that reported success while storing placeholder secrets. No alerts.yaml is touched and no runbook_url value changes. The existing URL scheme is made to resolve instead. WHAT LANDS - runbooks/<34>.md — one per name, each grounded in this cluster's real topology and, where one exists, its real incident history: the 2026-09-07 k3s-prod-1 etcd I/O starvation (measured PSI 11.36 vs 0.75/1.29, the exact journal lines, the four mechanisms proven inert), the Longhorn reboot tax and the freeze/thaw of concurrent-replica-rebuild-per-node-limit, Cilium's once-resolved egress interface cache (Ifindex 3 against a live 1780) and the absence of OSS failover, the CNPG 38-hour ContinuousArchiving=False with its measured 6.8 MiB/h disk-full clock and the 2026-09-12 aggregation-scope fix, the 2026-09-06 Keycloak lockout in which all 12 clients held literal placeholder secrets behind an entirely green cluster, the Velero R2 x-amz-tagging NotImplemented incompatibility and its v1.14.3-rc.2 pin, and swap re-enabling itself across reboots via systemd-gpt-auto-generator. Each page states what the alert means HERE, the first diagnostic commands, likely causes ordered by probability with a remediation each, and when to escalate or stop. - Every page uses FULLY-QUALIFIED resource names and says why: three CRDs register the kind `Backup` here, the bare short name resolves to Longhorn's (zero objects), so `kubectl get backup -A` prints "No resources found" on a cluster holding 6 Velero and 27 CNPG backups. Acting on that false negative is how a CLI quirk becomes data loss. - Every page states that kubectl only works via `infra/devcontainer/dev.sh run bash -c '...'` with an explicit `--context k3s-prod`, because dev.sh defaults its current-context to k3s-dev. - Pages also record which alert groups are INERT today (measured 2026-09-13: no Longhorn, cert-manager, Flux-controller or Hubble scrape job exists, so 13 rules evaluate against nothing) so nobody reads their silence as health. SERVING — runbooks/serving/ plus clusters/base/runbooks.yaml A two-replica nginx-unprivileged serving a ConfigMap generated from runbooks/*.md, at the apex `/runbooks` prefix, in its own non-gating post-platform Flux tier (dependsOn platform-config, wait:false) — the platform/homepage pattern, file for file. - The service catalog cannot express this route: ingressRoutes[].host is pattern-bound to a single DNS label plus the apex, so the bare apex is unrepresentable, and there is no path field. - Rejected: redirecting to the Gitea web UI. A runbook is read when the platform is broken, and Gitea is an app-tier workload whose own dependencies several of these runbooks document; Gateway API's RequestRedirect also has no "append .md" modifier, so it would need 34 hand-maintained ReplaceFullPath rules. - configMapGenerator maps each file to an EXTENSIONLESS key (node-down=node-down.md), so /runbooks/node-down is a plain static lookup with no rewrite rule. Served as text/plain: the namespace has DNS-only egress, so a CDN markdown renderer could not load anyway. - The tier declares NO postBuild.substituteFrom, deliberately: envsubst would run over the prose and silently empty every ${...} shell example (it fails open — the 2026-09-01 emptied Cilium k8sServiceHost). The HTTPRoute omits `hostnames:` and inherits the https-apex listener's, so nothing needs substituting. AUTH — PUBLIC, deliberately auth-mode=none. Gating these pages behind oauth2-proxy/Keycloak would make runbooks/keycloak-down unreadable when Keycloak is down and runbooks/keycloak-client-secrets unreadable during the exact 2026-09-06 failure mode. An operator who cannot log in is this route's primary reader. Content is operational procedure only, no secrets. The rationale is recorded in an annotation on the HTTPRoute so the route is left OUT of the Gateway ext-authz attachment when forward-auth enforcement lands. PROVEN — in-cluster probe through the Gateway on prod /runbooks/node-down HTTP 200 8613 bytes text/plain; charset=utf-8 /runbooks/keycloak-down HTTP 200 9378 bytes text/plain; charset=utf-8 /runbooks/cnpg-archiving HTTP 200 11729 bytes text/plain; charset=utf-8 /runbooks/longhorn-faulted HTTP 200 9135 bytes text/plain; charset=utf-8 /runbooks/vpn-down HTTP 200 11092 bytes text/plain; charset=utf-8 /runbooks/backup-failure HTTP 200 9604 bytes text/plain; charset=utf-8 HTTPRoute Accepted by io.cilium/gateway-controller on sectionName https-apex; the `/runbooks` prefix wins over homepage's apex `/` by Gateway API longest-path precedence. GUARD — conformance/tests/l0-static/alert-runbooks-resolvable (R-OBS-04) 363 offline assertions. It checks BOTH halves, because the regression is silent in both directions: an alert with a new runbook_url and no runbook links to a 404, AND a runbook committed without its configMapGenerator entry is in git, reviewed, merged, and still 404s in the cluster. Also asserts a quality floor so a stub cannot make the link look fixed, and that route/listener/nginx prefix agree with the annotations. Proven to fail, then reverted: a bogus runbook_url (2 FAIL), a runbook removed from the generator (1 FAIL), and a 31-byte stub (7 FAIL). Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <[email protected]>
158 lines
8.7 KiB
Markdown
158 lines
8.7 KiB
Markdown
# backup-missed — No successful Velero backup in 24 hours
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**Alert:** `VeleroNoRecentBackup` (critical, 1h)
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**File:** `platform/monitoring/alerts.yaml`, group `platform-health.backups`
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**Expression:** `(time() - velero_backup_last_successful_timestamp{schedule!=""}) > (24 * 3600)`
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## What this means here
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A Velero **schedule** has not produced a successful backup in over a day. This is the alert that catches
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the quiet failure — not "a backup broke" (that is `/runbooks/backup-failure`) but "backups stopped
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happening and nobody noticed". The `{schedule!=""}` filter means it only watches scheduled backups, so
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ad-hoc ones do not mask a dead schedule.
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Live shape on prod: two schedules, both `0 3 * * *` —
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`schedule.velero.io/velero-daily` and `schedule.velero.io/velero-daily-resources-only` — retention
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`720h`, target Cloudflare R2 (bucket `k3s-prod-backup`, prefix `velero`, region `auto`).
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**Why this alert is worth its `critical`:** the precedent is that these rules *could not fire at all*.
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Velero shipped with three backup alerts and the chart default `metrics.serviceMonitor.enabled: false`,
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confirmed live on prod — `kubectl -n velero get servicemonitor` returned no resources. Recorded verbatim:
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*"A nightly backup could fail — or silently stop running — for weeks with nothing to say so."* The
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ServiceMonitor now exists (`velero` and `velero/node-agent` are both live scrape jobs as of 2026-09-13),
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which is the only reason this alert is real.
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## READ THIS BEFORE YOU CONCLUDE THE BACKUPS ARE GONE
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`kubectl get backup -A` prints **"No resources found"** on this cluster **even when backups exist**.
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Three CRDs register the kind `Backup` — `longhorn.io/v1beta2`, `postgresql.cnpg.io/v1` and
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`velero.io/v1` — and the bare short name resolves to **Longhorn's**, which holds zero objects. Verified
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on prod 2026-09-13: the fully-qualified queries returned **6 Velero backups** and **27 CNPG backups**
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while the short name returned nothing. This false negative has already produced two wrong "the backups
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are missing" conclusions in one night. **A destructive recovery action taken on it is how a CLI quirk
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becomes real data loss.** Always:
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```
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backups.velero.io backups.postgresql.cnpg.io backups.longhorn.io
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schedules.velero.io scheduledbackups.postgresql.cnpg.io clusters.postgresql.cnpg.io
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```
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## Running the commands in this runbook
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`kubectl` does not work on the operator workstation. The toolchain lives only in the pinned dev
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container, and the host's `k3s-oidc` context hangs on a browser prompt once its token expires —
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that hang is not the cluster being down. Every command below runs as:
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infra/devcontainer/dev.sh run bash -c 'kubectl --context k3s-prod get nodes'
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Always pass `--context k3s-prod` explicitly. `dev.sh` merges both clusters into one kubeconfig and
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defaults its current-context to k3s-**dev**, so a command without `--context` silently answers
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about the wrong cluster. (`CLUSTER=prod infra/devcontainer/dev.sh run kubectl ...` is equivalent.)
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Do not run two `dev.sh` invocations at once — they share one container and interfere.
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USE FULLY-QUALIFIED RESOURCE NAMES, ALWAYS. Three CRDs on this cluster register the kind `Backup`:
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`longhorn.io/v1beta2`, `postgresql.cnpg.io/v1` and `velero.io/v1`. The bare short name resolves to
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Longhorn's, which holds zero objects — so `kubectl get backup -A` prints **"No resources found"** on
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a cluster holding 6 Velero backups and 27 CNPG backups. Verified on prod 2026-09-13. Reading that as
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"the backups are gone" and acting on it turns a false negative into real data loss. Write
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`backups.velero.io`, `backups.postgresql.cnpg.io`, `clusters.postgresql.cnpg.io`,
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`settings.longhorn.io`, `volumes.longhorn.io`, `nodes.longhorn.io`.
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Mutating kubectl (`apply`, `patch`, `annotate`, `rollout`) and `flux reconcile` are blocked for
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agents here: every durable change goes through git (`git push origin main` **is** the deploy).
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Where this runbook gives a mutating command it is for an operator, and it says so.
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## First commands
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Are the schedules enabled, and when did each last run?
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```
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infra/devcontainer/dev.sh run bash -c \
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'kubectl --context k3s-prod -n velero get schedules.velero.io \
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-o custom-columns=NAME:.metadata.name,SCHEDULE:.spec.schedule,PAUSED:.spec.paused,LASTBACKUP:.status.lastBackup,PHASE:.status.phase'
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```
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What backups actually exist (fully-qualified — the short name lies):
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```
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infra/devcontainer/dev.sh run bash -c \
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'kubectl --context k3s-prod get backups.velero.io -A \
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-o custom-columns=NAME:.metadata.name,PHASE:.status.phase,SCHEDULE:.metadata.labels.velero\\.io/schedule-name,START:.status.startTimestamp --sort-by=.status.startTimestamp'
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```
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Is the storage location usable at all?
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```
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infra/devcontainer/dev.sh run bash -c \
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'kubectl --context k3s-prod -n velero get backupstoragelocations.velero.io \
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-o custom-columns=NAME:.metadata.name,PHASE:.status.phase,LASTVALIDATED:.status.lastValidationTime,DEFAULT:.spec.default'
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```
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Is Velero's own Flux tier reconciling, or was it suspended?
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```
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infra/devcontainer/dev.sh run bash -c \
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'kubectl --context k3s-prod get kustomizations.kustomize.toolkit.fluxcd.io -A \
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-o custom-columns=NAME:.metadata.name,SUSPENDED:.spec.suspend,READY:.status.conditions[?\(@.type==\"Ready\"\)].status | grep -Ei "velero|NAME"'
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```
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And the controller:
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```
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infra/devcontainer/dev.sh run bash -c \
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'kubectl --context k3s-prod -n velero get pods; \
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kubectl --context k3s-prod -n velero logs deploy/velero --tail=120 2>&1 | tail -40'
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```
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## Likely causes, most likely first
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### 1. The Velero Flux tier was suspended and nobody resumed it
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This has happened: **Velero was found suspended live, with the suspension never recorded in git**, and
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was resumed with `flux resume`. A suspended backup controller is a silent DR gap and is precisely the
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class this alert exists for. Remediation (operator): `flux resume kustomization velero`, and see
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`/runbooks/flux-suspended` for why an undocumented live suspension is itself a problem.
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### 2. The schedule is paused
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`schedules.velero.io` has `spec.paused`. Note from the live listing that
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`velero-daily-resources-only` shows an empty PAUSED column while `velero-daily` shows `false` — read the
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field, not the column width. A paused schedule is a git change to unpause.
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### 3. Every run is failing rather than not running
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Then `backups.velero.io` will show recent `Failed` entries and this alert is a downstream symptom. Go to
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`/runbooks/backup-failure` — and in particular check the plugin pin
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(`velero/velero-plugin-for-aws:v1.14.3-rc.2`), because the R2 tagging bug produces exactly this: volume
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data uploads, the backup goes Failed, and no successful backup ever lands.
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### 4. The BackupStorageLocation is not Available
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A wrong endpoint, a bad credential, or the placeholder. `clusters/prod` deliberately carried the loud
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placeholder `https://TBD-R2-ACCOUNT-ID.r2.cloudflarestorage.com` rather than inheriting the base (dev)
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value, because *"an omitted op means prod silently inherits a dev address — far worse than a failed
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apply"*. Check `S3_BACKUP_ENDPOINT`, `S3_BACKUP_REGION` (`auto`), `VELERO_BACKUP_BUCKET`,
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`VELERO_BACKUP_PREFIX`, `BACKUP_CREDENTIALS_SUFFIX` (`-prod`).
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### 5. Velero cannot schedule a pod
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Node pressure, or the node-agent DaemonSet unhealthy. Cross-read `/runbooks/node-io`.
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### 6. The metric, not the backup, is missing
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If `velero_backup_last_successful_timestamp` has no series at all the rule cannot fire — which is the
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historical state. Confirm the `velero` scrape job is up (`/runbooks/targets-down`) before trusting either
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its silence or its firing.
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## When to escalate or stop
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- **Escalate: this is a DR alarm and 24h is already a real window of exposure.**
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- **Do not create an ad-hoc backup and consider the alert answered.** The expression filters
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`{schedule!=""}`, so a manual backup will not clear it, and more importantly it does not fix the
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schedule. (An operator's ad-hoc run for reassurance is
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`velero backup create --from-schedule velero-daily`.)
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- **Do not conclude "no backups exist" from `kubectl get backup`.** See the trap above.
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- **Remember the databases are separate.** `keycloak-db`, `nextcloud-db` and `semaphore-db` are covered
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by CNPG's Barman archive, not by Velero. This alert being clear says nothing about them, and vice
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versa — check `/runbooks/cnpg-backup-missed` too.
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- **Be honest about restore:** `dr-restore` is authored and has **never been executed**, so the R2
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restore path is unrehearsed. Free R2 egress makes a rehearsal cheap; it is still outstanding.
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---
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Source of truth: `runbooks/backup-missed.md`. Index: `/runbooks/`
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Records: commit `2d5171e` (Velero had no ServiceMonitor, so these alerts could never fire);
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`DECISIONS-LOG.md` (Velero found suspended with the suspension never in git; `dr-restore` never
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executed); commit `32d6766` (R2 decision and endpoint knobs).
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