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Monitoring

5-Spot provides comprehensive monitoring through Prometheus metrics and health endpoints.

Health Endpoints

Liveness Probe

GET /health
Port: 8081 (default)

Returns 200 OK if the controller is alive.

Readiness Probe

GET /ready
Port: 8081 (default)

Returns 200 OK if the controller is ready to accept work.

Kubernetes Configuration

livenessProbe:
  httpGet:
    path: /health
    port: 8081
  initialDelaySeconds: 5
  periodSeconds: 10

readinessProbe:
  httpGet:
    path: /ready
    port: 8081
  initialDelaySeconds: 5
  periodSeconds: 10

Prometheus Metrics

Endpoint

GET /metrics
Port: 8080 (default)

Available Metrics

Metric Type Description
five_spot_up Gauge Operator health (1 = healthy)
five_spot_reconciliations_total Counter Total reconciliations by phase and result
five_spot_reconciliation_duration_seconds Histogram Reconciliation duration
five_spot_machines_total Gauge Total machines by phase
five_spot_schedule_evaluations_total Counter Schedule evaluations performed

Labels

Common labels across metrics:

Label Description
phase Machine lifecycle phase
result Operation result (success, error)
namespace Resource namespace
name Resource name

ServiceMonitor (Prometheus Operator)

apiVersion: monitoring.coreos.com/v1
kind: ServiceMonitor
metadata:
  name: 5spot-controller
  namespace: monitoring
spec:
  selector:
    matchLabels:
      app: 5spot-controller
  endpoints:
    - port: metrics
      interval: 30s
      path: /metrics
  namespaceSelector:
    matchNames:
      - 5spot-system

Grafana Dashboard

Example queries for a Grafana dashboard:

Operator Health

five_spot_up

Machines by Phase

sum by (phase) (five_spot_machines_total)

Reconciliation Rate

rate(five_spot_reconciliations_total[5m])

Reconciliation Latency (p99)

histogram_quantile(0.99, rate(five_spot_reconciliation_duration_seconds_bucket[5m]))

Error Rate

rate(five_spot_reconciliations_total{result="error"}[5m])

Structured Logging

Log Format

Logs are emitted as structured JSON by default (controlled by RUST_LOG_FORMAT). Every log line carries standard fields including a reconcile_id correlation field that is unique per reconciliation attempt:

{
  "timestamp": "2026-04-09T00:00:00.123456Z",
  "level": "INFO",
  "fields": {
    "message": "Starting reconciliation",
    "reconcile_id": "deadbeef0001-17f3e2a1b",
    "resource": "my-machine",
    "namespace": "production"
  },
  "target": "five_spot::reconcilers::scheduled_machine",
  "span": { "name": "reconcile" }
}

Correlation IDs

The reconcile_id field ties together every log line produced during a single reconciliation. Use it to trace a full reconciliation end-to-end in your log aggregation platform:

# Follow all log lines for a specific reconciliation (jq)
kubectl logs -n 5spot-system -l app=5spot-controller | \
  jq -c 'select(.fields.reconcile_id == "deadbeef0001-17f3e2a1b")'

# Find all reconciliations for a specific resource
kubectl logs -n 5spot-system -l app=5spot-controller | \
  jq -c 'select(.fields.resource == "my-machine")'

# Find all error-phase transitions
kubectl logs -n 5spot-system -l app=5spot-controller | \
  jq -c 'select(.fields.to_phase == "Error")'

Phase Transition Logs

Every phase transition logs both the before (from_phase) and after (to_phase) values:

{
  "level": "INFO",
  "fields": {
    "message": "Phase transition",
    "from_phase": "Pending",
    "to_phase": "Active",
    "reconcile_id": "deadbeef0001-17f3e2a1b",
    "resource": "my-machine",
    "namespace": "production"
  }
}

Error Back-off Log Fields

When a reconciliation fails, the error policy emits an error-level log line with two additional fields:

Field Type Description
retry_count u32 How many consecutive failures have occurred for this resource
backoff_secs u64 Requeue delay chosen for this retry (30 s → 60 → 120 → 240 → 300 s cap) 
{
  "level": "ERROR",
  "fields": {
    "message": "Reconciliation error — requeuing with exponential back-off",
    "error": "CAPI operation failed: ...",
    "retry_count": 3,
    "backoff_secs": 240,
    "resource": "my-machine",
    "namespace": "production"
  }
}

The retry count resets to 0 after a successful reconciliation, so a resource that recovers starts fresh on the next failure.

Log Levels

Level Use
error Unrecoverable failures — always investigate
warn Recoverable issues (PDB-blocked eviction, event publish failure)
info Phase transitions, reconciliation start/end
debug Per-pod decisions, API call details
trace Internal state, schedule evaluation

Set via RUST_LOG:

RUST_LOG=info,kube=warn,hyper=warn  # Production default
RUST_LOG=debug                       # Verbose (--verbose flag)

Kubernetes Events

5-Spot publishes a Kubernetes Event for every phase transition, visible via:

kubectl describe scheduledmachine <name>
# or
kubectl get events --field-selector involvedObject.kind=ScheduledMachine

Event types and reasons:

Type Reason Trigger
Normal MachineCreated Transition to Active — CAPI resources provisioned
Normal ScheduleActive Machine entered schedule window
Normal ScheduleInactive Machine exited schedule window
Normal GracePeriodActive Graceful shutdown countdown started
Normal NodeDraining / NodeDrained Node drain start / completion
Normal MachineDeleted Transition to Inactive — CAPI resources removed
Normal ScheduleDisabled Schedule disabled, machine deactivated
Warning ReconcileFailed Unrecoverable error — machine in Error phase
Warning KillSwitchActivated Emergency kill switch triggered

Events are written to the events.k8s.io/v1 API and are immutable once created, providing an auditable state-change trail (SOX §404 / NIST AU-2).

Alerting Examples

Prometheus AlertManager Rules

groups:
  - name: 5spot
    rules:
      - alert: FiveSpotOperatorDown
        expr: five_spot_up == 0
        for: 5m
        labels:
          severity: critical
        annotations:
          summary: "5-Spot controller is down"

      - alert: FiveSpotHighErrorRate
        expr: rate(five_spot_reconciliations_total{result="error"}[5m]) > 0.1
        for: 10m
        labels:
          severity: warning
        annotations:
          summary: "High reconciliation error rate"

      - alert: FiveSpotSlowReconciliation
        expr: histogram_quantile(0.99, rate(five_spot_reconciliation_duration_seconds_bucket[5m])) > 30
        for: 15m
        labels:
          severity: warning
        annotations:
          summary: "Slow reconciliation detected"