HTTP Error Troubleshooting

If you have experienced a non-200 HTTP response code while using Kubecost, consult this doc for a possible fix.

You will likely encounter these response codes in the browser, when performing REST requests through a client like cURL, or when viewing the logs kubectl logs deploy/kubecost-cost-analyzer -c cost-analyzer-frontend -n kubecost.

HTTP 403 Forbidden

This is most likely due to a user authenticating to Kubecost or performing an action in Kubecost that they don't have permissions to do (for example, saving a report when the user has read-only access). There is also a possibility that this error is caused by intermediary services such as load balancers, firewalls, or service meshes.

• Review the Helm values used to determine if SAML, OIDC, and RBAC are being used which could lead to the 403 error.

• Verify if the 403 error occurs when port forwarding to the cost-analyzer frontend. This will allow you to determine if the error is being introduced by an external service.

• Ensure that readonly has not been set to truein your values.yaml file

HTTP 499 Client closed connection

This is usually the NGINX gateway (inside the kubecost-cost-analyzer pod) reporting that the client has closed the connection.

• All client requests may need increased timeouts.

• If client requests are only timing out on Kubecost and nothing else, Kubecost may need more CPU/memory so that it can process the API requests faster.

• A loadbalancer/router/proxy between the client and the Kubecost service may be timing out the request too quickly.

Test command

Note: The following test command can be used for troubleshooting both 499 and 504 errors.

• If running the following command fails or hangs when the pod is ready, the error is likely due to intermittent DNS:

  • kubectl exec -i -t -n kubecost kubecost-cost-analyzer-55c45d9d95-8m2sq -c cost-analyzer-frontend -- curl kubecost-cost-analyzer.kubecost:9090/model/clusterInfo

HTTP 504 Gateway timeout

Almost always because the cost-model container in the kubecost-cost-analyzer pod is down. If the pods are consistently restarting, this could be due to OOM (Out of Memory) errors. As noted in our AWS Cloud Integration doc:

Kubecost’s cost-model requires roughly 2 CPU and 10 GB of RAM per 50,000 pods monitored. The backing Prometheus database requires roughly 2 CPU and 25 GB per million metrics ingested per minute. You can pick the EC2 instances necessary to run Kubecost accordingly. Kubecost can write its cache to disk. Roughly 32 GB per 100,000 pods monitored is sufficient.

• Ensure you have allowed enough memory requests and limits.