Frequently Asked Questions
Q: How can I reduce CPU or Memory resource consumption by Kubecost? A: Please review our Tuning Resource Consumption guide.
Q: Can I safely configure Thanos Compaction down sampling? A: Yes, Kubecost is resilient to downsampling. However turning query concurrency is going to be most beneficial, especially during the long rebuild windows. To tune downsampling use the following Thanos subchart values.
Q: Why do I receive a 403 error when trying to save reports or alerts? A: This is due to the SAML user having read-only RBAC permissions.
Q: What does "share tenancy" mean? A: This enables sharing the cost of the K8s management plane for hosted Kubernetes offerings, such as EKS/AKS/GKE costs.
Q: Why is the Network column on the Allocations page not showing any data? A: This tile relies on service names, which requires one of the following values to be enabled.
Q: How often does reconciliation run? A: The Cloud Usage process runs every 3 hours, however the Cost and Usage Reports (CUR) are updated by cloud providers less frequently.
Q: How are short-lived jobs accounted for? A: If the Prometheus scrape interval is 1m, then a job that ran for 5s, 30s, or 100s, but only registered one data point, all costs the same to us: 1m * $/m. The scrape interval can be configured to be faster, but there are consequences (More resource usage due to additional metrics).
Q: How often are AWS Spot prices updated? A: If enabled, Kubecost will refresh Spot instances every 15 minutes. Note, that the Spot data feed may be updated hourly. Review the AWS docs for more conclusive info.
Q: My CUR appears to be integrated properly but I'm not seeing any additional cloud assets that I would expect on the Assets page.
A: Verify that the Helm values of kubecostModel.etlCloudUsage or kubecostModel.etlCloudAsset are not set to false. See the Helm chart for reference.
Q: I just enabled the CUR and AWS integration but do not see any cloud resources? A: The AWS CUR and billing data from other cloud providers lag by 24-48 hours.
Q: Why is the UI on my secondary Kubecost install broken? A: This is normal if you have followed our Secondary Clusters guide, because its focus is reducing resource usage at the cost of breaking the secondary UI. The secondary UI should only be used for diagnostics.
Q: I have two standalone Kubecost clusters in an Azure subscription, each residing in its own resource group. How can I limit the billing export for each cluster to only the resource group instead of the entire subscription? A: You can create two billing exports each scoped to the corresponding resource group. Review Azure's guide on exporting dates for more info.
Q: I have an empty namespace, why is it not showing up in Kubecost? A: Kubecost builds the allocation API from known workloads. If there are no workloads in the namespace it will not be aware of the namespace.
Q: Can customer logos be added to Kubecost? A: Currently, this feature isn't planned. Due to technical difficulties, this may take considerable effort to implement.
Q: What license does the Enterprise version of Kubecost use? A: Paid Kubecost versions use our EULA.
Q: When configuring Spot feeds in a federated cluster, where should it be configured? A: The Spot data feed is meant to supplement node prices before the CUR drops. Because of this, it should be configured in each cluster to give the most accurate estimates as the data needs to be written into Thanos.
Q: Does the Abandoned Workloads savings report rely on the Network Traffic daemonSet? A: No, it uses cAdvisor metrics.
Q: Does Kubecost's cost efficiency calculation take GPU into consideration? A: No, the reason is that we get GPU efficiency from integration with the Nvidia DCGM, which is a third-party integration that needs to be set up manually with Kubecost.
Q: Should I use amortized prices when setting up my CUR or billing export? A: Yes, amortized allows upfront costs of the resources to appear in Kubecost. More info here.
Q: Do I need to configure the cloud integration on the secondary clusters? A: No, only if you are planning on viewing the UI on the secondary. This is because the cloud reconciliation process happens after the data is shipped to the Thanos store.
Q: What is the difference between rebuild and repair commands?
A: rebuild is a legacy command and repair should be used instead, as it builds on top of the existing ETL instead of wiping it completely. (Use repair command when possible.)
Q: For GCP, I'm unable to see the GCP Project on the Allocations page. A: You can only filter by project in Assets. A workaround for this is naming their clusters with a naming convention that includes the project name or number.
Q: How can I add TLS to the Kubecost-bundled Prometheus? A: See the following Helm values.
Q: Does Kubecost change labels/tags that include a - dash to an _ underscore?
A: Yes, this is due to limitations in how Prometheus handles labels.
Q: What time of the day is the Azure costs export updated? A: The Azure costs export update time is relative to the time of day when it was initially created. See Azure docs on exporting data for more
Q: What regions/currencies are available for the Azure rate card integration? A: Azure is very specific as to what currency can be used for each region/country. Azure provides that information here.
Q: I would like to use the node-exporter DaemonSet provided with Openshift, however after disabling Kubecost-bundled Prometheus, it is unable to discover the node-exporter endpoints.
A: The Openshift provided node-exporter requires an additional annotation of prometheus.io/scrape: "true" to be added.
Q: How can I disable kube-state-metrics if needed?
A: It can be disabled with one of two methods prometheus.kubeStateMetrics.enabled=false or prometheus.kube-state-metrics.disabled=true. We recommend disabling any 3rd party KSM instead of our bundled version.
Q: Does increasing the .Values.kubecostModel.etlResolutionSeconds value cause any issues with cost accuracy?
A: Decreasing resolution may flatten out cost spikes but the summation of costs should not be affected.
Q: Is there a way to test alerts via the API?
A: Yes, there is a /model/alerts/test API endpoint that sends a blank test message. In order to use the API, first perform a GET to /model/alerts which will return all configured alerts. Then perform a POST to /model/alerts/test with the payload being that of the alert you wish to test.
Alert payloads may differ in contents based on the type, but one basic example is shown below.
If the test is successful, for example if the test was for an email, content will be returned indicating the overall status.
Another suggestion for testing alert filters is to create an alert with a small window and wait. The API will allow hours in the window.
Q: Kubecost allows configuring in-zone/in-region/cross-region traffic classification. After I tried to configure this and saw that the values have been configured, I couldn’t see traffic classification allocation in the dashboard. Is this feature still supported? A: Check http://<your-kubecost-address>/details! From there, look for the bottom right box to view more network details. It also may be important to have the network-costs DaemonSet running in your cluster.
Q: When cloud integration is not yet enabled, does Kubecost's usage of public pricing data take into account the region the node is on?
A: Yes. This can be verified by reviewing the code at opencost/pkg/cloud. Specifically, if you start at GetNodeCost() you can follow the chain of function calls. It's slightly different for each cloud provider, but it should look roughly like this: pkg/costmodel/GetNodeCost() → pkg/cloud/NodePricing() → pkg/cloud/DownloadPricingData() → pkg/cloud/getRegionPricing()
Q: If I disable node exporter, will it affect the metrics emitted by Kubecost? A: Yes you can disable node exporter as it is optional. No, it will not have an effect on Kubecost's metrics. Read about the effects of disabling the node exporter here.
Q: Why am I receiving a “No Athena Bucket Configured” error on my Diagnostics page? A: Verify that the the AWS IAM Policy has been correctly configured (Step 3). Verify that the IAM role has been given to Kubecost (Step 4).
Q: What time zone is shown by Kubecost? A: All APIs and metrics will be based on and accept UTC zones. When viewing the data from your web browser, the graphs displayed will convert this UTC time to your local machine's time zone.
Q: When using the aggregate parameter with the Allocation API (/model/allocation), the returned line items don't always list the full set of "properties".
A: This happens when the values of these "properties" collide upon performing the aggregation. For example if performing the aggregation by aggregate=label:app, the line item app=hello-world may belong to multiple namespaces and Kubecost would therefore omit "properties.namespace" altogether. The most effective workaround is to perform a multi-aggregation (aggregate=namespace,label:app) to ensure all the properties you want will exist in the result. More discussion in this GitHub issue.
Q: What is the difference between .Values.kubecostToken and Values.kubecostProductConfigs.productKey?
A: .Values.kubecostToken is primarily used to manage trial access and is provided to you when visiting http://kubecost.com/install. .Values.kubecostProductConfigs.productKey is used to apply an Enterprise license. More info in this doc.
Q: When attempting to view certain Savings Insights in my GCP-managed environment, I receive this error message: "Failed to load resources. Check that you have a valid service key and the cost analyzer API is running, then refresh." This is a 403 error which reasons "ACCESS_TOKEN_SCOPE_INSUFFICIENT". How do I get access?
A. To receive access to these features, you need to properly configure Workload Identity for your service account. To learn more about this, see our Accessing Kubecost with GCP Workload Identity article for a step-by-step tutorial.
Q: How can I configure node-exporter to use an internal cluster IP instead of the node network?
A: Set the following Helm value: prometheus.nodeExporter.hostNetwork=false.
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