Memory Settings for Running SQL Server in Kubernetes
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People often ask me what’s the number one thing to look out for when running SQL Server on Kubernetes…the answer is memory settings. In this post, we’re going to dig into why you need to configure resource limits in your SQL Server’s Pod Spec when running SQL Server workloads in Kubernetes. I’m running these demos in Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS), but these concepts apply to any SQL Server environment running in Kubernetes.
Let’s deploy SQL Server in a Pod without any resource limits. In the yaml below, we’re using a Deployment to run one SQL Server Pod with a PersistentVolumeClaim for our instance directory and also frontending the Pod with a Service for access.
apiVersion: apps/v1
kind: Deployment
metadata:
name: mssql-deployment-2017
spec:
replicas: 1
strategy:
type: Recreate
selector:
matchLabels:
app: mssql-2017
template:
metadata:
labels:
app: mssql-2017
spec:
hostname: sql3
containers:
- name: mssql
image: 'mcr.microsoft.com/mssql/server:2017-CU16-ubuntu'
ports:
- containerPort: 1433
env:
- name: ACCEPT_EULA
value: "Y"
- name: SA_PASSWORD
valueFrom:
secretKeyRef:
name: mssql
key: SA_PASSWORD
volumeMounts:
- name: mssqldb
mountPath: /var/opt/mssql
volumes:
- name: mssqldb
persistentVolumeClaim:
claimName: pvc-sql-2017
---
apiVersion: v1
kind: PersistentVolumeClaim
metadata:
name: pvc-sql-2017
spec:
accessModes:
- ReadWriteOnce
resources:
requests:
storage: 50Gi
storageClassName: managed-premium
---
apiVersion: v1
kind: Service
metadata:
name: mssql-svc-2017
spec:
selector:
app: mssql-2017
ports:
- protocol: TCP
port: 1433
targetPort: 1433
type: LoadBalancer
Running a Workload Against our Pod…then BOOM!
With that Pod deployed, I loaded up a HammerDB TPC-C test with about 10GB of data and drove a workload against our SQL Server. Then while monitoring the workload…boom HammerDB throws connection errors and crashes. Let’s look at why.
First thing’s first, let’s check the Pods status with kubectl get pods. We’ll that’s interesting I have 13 Pods. 1 has a Status of Running and the remainder have are Evicted.
kubectl get pods NAME READY STATUS RESTARTS AGE mssql-deployment-2017-8698fb8bf5-2pw2z 0/1 Evicted 0 8m24s mssql-deployment-2017-8698fb8bf5-4bn6c 0/1 Evicted 0 8m23s mssql-deployment-2017-8698fb8bf5-4pw7d 0/1 Evicted 0 8m25s mssql-deployment-2017-8698fb8bf5-54k6k 0/1 Evicted 0 8m27s mssql-deployment-2017-8698fb8bf5-96lzf 0/1 Evicted 0 8m26s mssql-deployment-2017-8698fb8bf5-clrbx 0/1 Evicted 0 8m27s mssql-deployment-2017-8698fb8bf5-cp6ml 0/1 Evicted 0 8m27s mssql-deployment-2017-8698fb8bf5-ln8zt 0/1 Evicted 0 8m27s mssql-deployment-2017-8698fb8bf5-nmq65 0/1 Evicted 0 8m21s mssql-deployment-2017-8698fb8bf5-p2mvm 0/1 Evicted 0 25h mssql-deployment-2017-8698fb8bf5-stzfw 0/1 Evicted 0 8m23s mssql-deployment-2017-8698fb8bf5-td24w 1/1 Running 0 8m20s mssql-deployment-2017-8698fb8bf5-wpgcx 0/1 Evicted 0 8m22s
What Just Happened?
Let’s keep digging and look at kubectl get events to see if that can help us sort out what’s happening…reading through these events a lot is going on. Let’s start at the top, we can see that our original Pod mssql-deployment-2017-8698fb8bf5-p2mvm is Killed and the line below that tells us why. The Node had a MemoryPressure condition. A few lines below that we see that our mssql container was using 4461532Ki which exceeded its request of 0 (more on why it’s 0 in a bit). So then our Deployment Controller sees that our Pod is no longer up and running so the Deployment controller does what it’s supposed to do start a new Pod in the place of the failed Pod.
The scheduler in Kubernetes will try to place a Pod back onto the same Node if the Node is still available, in our case aks-agentpool-43452558-0. And each time the scheduler places the Pod back onto the same Node it find that the MemoryPressure condition is still true, so after the 10th try the scheduler selects a new Node, aks-agentpool-43452558-3 to run our Pod. And in the last line of the output below we can see that once the workload is moved to aks-agentpool-43452558-3 the MemoryPressure condition goes away on aks-agentpool-43452558-0 since it’s no longer running our workload.
kubectl get events --sort-by=.metadata.creationTimestamp LAST SEEN TYPE REASON OBJECT MESSAGE 17m Normal Scheduled pod/mssql-deployment-2017-8698fb8bf5-clrbx Successfully assigned default/mssql-deployment-2017-8698fb8bf5-clrbx to aks-agentpool-43452558-0 17m Warning EvictionThresholdMet node/aks-agentpool-43452558-0 Attempting to reclaim memory 17m Normal SuccessfulCreate replicaset/mssql-deployment-2017-8698fb8bf5 Created pod: mssql-deployment-2017-8698fb8bf5-clrbx 17m Normal SuccessfulCreate replicaset/mssql-deployment-2017-8698fb8bf5 Created pod: mssql-deployment-2017-8698fb8bf5-ln8zt 17m Normal Killing pod/mssql-deployment-2017-8698fb8bf5-p2mvm Stopping container mssql 17m Warning Evicted pod/mssql-deployment-2017-8698fb8bf5-54k6k The node had condition: [MemoryPressure]. 17m Warning Evicted pod/mssql-deployment-2017-8698fb8bf5-p2mvm The node was low on resource: memory. Container mssql was using 4461532Ki, which exceeds its request of 0. 17m Warning Evicted pod/mssql-deployment-2017-8698fb8bf5-cp6ml The node had condition: [MemoryPressure]. 17m Normal Scheduled pod/mssql-deployment-2017-8698fb8bf5-cp6ml Successfully assigned default/mssql-deployment-2017-8698fb8bf5-cp6ml to aks-agentpool-43452558-0 17m Normal Scheduled pod/mssql-deployment-2017-8698fb8bf5-54k6k Successfully assigned default/mssql-deployment-2017-8698fb8bf5-54k6k to aks-agentpool-43452558-0 17m Warning Evicted pod/mssql-deployment-2017-8698fb8bf5-clrbx The node had condition: [MemoryPressure]. 17m Normal SuccessfulCreate replicaset/mssql-deployment-2017-8698fb8bf5 Created pod: mssql-deployment-2017-8698fb8bf5-cp6ml 17m Normal SuccessfulCreate replicaset/mssql-deployment-2017-8698fb8bf5 Created pod: mssql-deployment-2017-8698fb8bf5-54k6k 17m Normal Scheduled pod/mssql-deployment-2017-8698fb8bf5-ln8zt Successfully assigned default/mssql-deployment-2017-8698fb8bf5-ln8zt to aks-agentpool-43452558-0 17m Normal Scheduled pod/mssql-deployment-2017-8698fb8bf5-96lzf Successfully assigned default/mssql-deployment-2017-8698fb8bf5-96lzf to aks-agentpool-43452558-0 17m Normal SuccessfulCreate replicaset/mssql-deployment-2017-8698fb8bf5 Created pod: mssql-deployment-2017-8698fb8bf5-96lzf 17m Warning Evicted pod/mssql-deployment-2017-8698fb8bf5-ln8zt The node had condition: [MemoryPressure]. 17m Warning Evicted pod/mssql-deployment-2017-8698fb8bf5-96lzf The node had condition: [MemoryPressure]. 17m Warning Evicted pod/mssql-deployment-2017-8698fb8bf5-4pw7d The node had condition: [MemoryPressure]. 17m Normal Scheduled pod/mssql-deployment-2017-8698fb8bf5-4pw7d Successfully assigned default/mssql-deployment-2017-8698fb8bf5-4pw7d to aks-agentpool-43452558-0 17m Normal SuccessfulCreate replicaset/mssql-deployment-2017-8698fb8bf5 Created pod: mssql-deployment-2017-8698fb8bf5-4pw7d 17m Warning Evicted pod/mssql-deployment-2017-8698fb8bf5-2pw2z The node had condition: [MemoryPressure]. 17m Normal Scheduled pod/mssql-deployment-2017-8698fb8bf5-2pw2z Successfully assigned default/mssql-deployment-2017-8698fb8bf5-2pw2z to aks-agentpool-43452558-0 17m Normal SuccessfulCreate replicaset/mssql-deployment-2017-8698fb8bf5 Created pod: mssql-deployment-2017-8698fb8bf5-2pw2z 17m Warning Evicted pod/mssql-deployment-2017-8698fb8bf5-4bn6c The node had condition: [MemoryPressure]. 17m Normal SuccessfulCreate replicaset/mssql-deployment-2017-8698fb8bf5 Created pod: mssql-deployment-2017-8698fb8bf5-4bn6c 17m Normal SuccessfulCreate replicaset/mssql-deployment-2017-8698fb8bf5 Created pod: mssql-deployment-2017-8698fb8bf5-stzfw 17m Normal Scheduled pod/mssql-deployment-2017-8698fb8bf5-4bn6c Successfully assigned default/mssql-deployment-2017-8698fb8bf5-4bn6c to aks-agentpool-43452558-0 17m Warning Evicted pod/mssql-deployment-2017-8698fb8bf5-stzfw The node had condition: [MemoryPressure]. 17m Normal SuccessfulCreate replicaset/mssql-deployment-2017-8698fb8bf5 (combined from similar events): Created pod: mssql-deployment-2017-8698fb8bf5-td24w 17m Normal Scheduled pod/mssql-deployment-2017-8698fb8bf5-wpgcx Successfully assigned default/mssql-deployment-2017-8698fb8bf5-wpgcx to aks-agentpool-43452558-0 17m Warning Evicted pod/mssql-deployment-2017-8698fb8bf5-wpgcx The node had condition: [MemoryPressure]. 17m Normal Scheduled pod/mssql-deployment-2017-8698fb8bf5-stzfw Successfully assigned default/mssql-deployment-2017-8698fb8bf5-stzfw to aks-agentpool-43452558-3 17m Warning Evicted pod/mssql-deployment-2017-8698fb8bf5-nmq65 The node had condition: [MemoryPressure]. 17m Normal Scheduled pod/mssql-deployment-2017-8698fb8bf5-nmq65 Successfully assigned default/mssql-deployment-2017-8698fb8bf5-nmq65 to aks-agentpool-43452558-0 17m Normal NodeHasInsufficientMemory node/aks-agentpool-43452558-0 Node aks-agentpool-43452558-0 status is now: NodeHasInsufficientMemory 17m Normal Scheduled pod/mssql-deployment-2017-8698fb8bf5-td24w Successfully assigned default/mssql-deployment-2017-8698fb8bf5-td24w to aks-agentpool-43452558-3 16m Normal SuccessfulAttachVolume pod/mssql-deployment-2017-8698fb8bf5-td24w AttachVolume.Attach succeeded for volume "pvc-f35b270a-e063-11e9-9b6d-ee8baa4f9319" 15m Normal Pulling pod/mssql-deployment-2017-8698fb8bf5-td24w Pulling image "mcr.microsoft.com/mssql/server:2017-CU16-ubuntu" 15m Normal Pulled pod/mssql-deployment-2017-8698fb8bf5-td24w Successfully pulled image "mcr.microsoft.com/mssql/server:2017-CU16-ubuntu" 15m Normal Started pod/mssql-deployment-2017-8698fb8bf5-td24w Started container mssql 15m Normal Created pod/mssql-deployment-2017-8698fb8bf5-td24w Created container mssql 12m Normal NodeHasSufficientMemory node/aks-agentpool-43452558-0 Node aks-agentpool-43452558-0 status is now: NodeHasSufficientMemory
But guess what…we’re going to have the same problem on this new Node. If we run our workload again, our memory allocation will grow and Kubernetes will kill the Pod again once the MemoryPressure condition is met. So what do we do…how can we prevent our nodes from going into a MemoryPressure condition?
Understanding Allocatable Memory in Kubernetes
Using kubectl describe node, in the output below there’s a section Allocatable. In there we can see that amount of allocatable resources on this Node in terms of CPU, disk, RAM and Pods. These are the amount of resources available to run user Pods on this Node. And there we see the amount of allocatable memory is 4667840Ki (~4.45GB) so we have about that much memory to run our workloads. The amount here is a function of the amount of memory in the Node and reservations made by Kubernetes for system functions, more on that here. Our AKS cluster VMs are Standard DS2 v2 which have 2vCPU and 7GB of RAM, so about 2.55GB is reserved for other uses. The output below is from after our Pod was evicted so we can see the LastTransitionTime shows the last time a condition occurred and for MemoryPressure we can see an event at 7:53 AM. The other LastTransitionTimes are from when the Node was started. Another key point is in the Events section where we can see the conditions change state.
kubectl describe nodes aks-agentpool-43452558-0 Name: aks-agentpool-43452558-0 ...output omitted... Unschedulable: false Conditions: Type Status LastHeartbeatTime LastTransitionTime Reason Message ---- ------ ----------------- ------------------ ------ ------- NetworkUnavailable False Tue, 10 Sep 2019 16:20:00 -0500 Tue, 10 Sep 2019 16:20:00 -0500 RouteCreated RouteController created a route MemoryPressure False. Sat, 28 Sep 2019 07:58:56 -0500. Sat, 28 Sep 2019 07:53:55 -0500. KubeletHasSufficientMemory kubelet has sufficient memory available DiskPressure False Sat, 28 Sep 2019 07:58:56 -0500 Tue, 10 Sep 2019 16:18:27 -0500 KubeletHasNoDiskPressure kubelet has no disk pressure PIDPressure False Sat, 28 Sep 2019 07:58:56 -0500 Tue, 10 Sep 2019 16:18:27 -0500 KubeletHasSufficientPID kubelet has sufficient PID available Ready True Sat, 28 Sep 2019 07:58:56 -0500 Tue, 10 Sep 2019 16:18:27 -0500 KubeletReady kubelet is posting ready status. AppArmor enabled Addresses: Hostname: aks-agentpool-43452558-0 InternalIP: 10.240.0.6 Capacity: attachable-volumes-azure-disk: 8 cpu: 2 ephemeral-storage: 101584140Ki hugepages-1Gi: 0 hugepages-2Mi: 0 memory: 7113152Ki pods: 110 Allocatable: attachable-volumes-azure-disk: 8 cpu: 1931m ephemeral-storage: 93619943269 hugepages-1Gi: 0 hugepages-2Mi: 0 memory: 4667840Ki pods: 110 ...output omitted... Events: Type Reason Age From Message ---- ------ ---- ---- ------- Warning EvictionThresholdMet 10m kubelet, aks-agentpool-43452558-0 Attempting to reclaim memory Normal NodeHasInsufficientMemory 10m kubelet, aks-agentpool-43452558-0 Node aks-agentpool-43452558-0 status is now: NodeHasInsufficientMemory Normal NodeHasSufficientMemory 5m15s (x2 over 14d) kubelet, aks-agentpool-43452558-0 Node aks-agentpool-43452558-0 status is now: NodeHasSufficientMemory
SQL Server’s View of Memory on Kubernetes Nodes
When using a Pod with no memory limits defined in the Pod Spec (which is why we saw 0 for the limits in the Event entry) SQL Server sees 5557MB (~5.4GB) memory available and thinks it has that to use. Why is that? Well, SQL Server on Linux looks at the base OS to see how much memory is available on the system and by default uses approximately 80% of that memory due its architecture (SQLPAL).
2019-09-28 14:46:16.23 Server Detected 5557 MB of RAM. This is an informational message; no user action is required.
This is bad news in our situation, Kubernetes has only 4667840Ki (~4.45GB) to allocate before setting the MemoryPressure condition which will cause our Pod to be Evicted and Terminated. And as with our workload running SQL Server allocates memory, primarily to the buffer pool, and it exceeds the Allocatable amount of memory for the Node Kubernetes kills our Pod to protect the Node and the cluster as a whole.
Configuring Pod Limits for SQL Server
So how do we fix all of this? We need to set a resource limit in our Pod Spec. Limits allow us to control the amount of a particular resource exposed to a Pod. And in our case, we want to limit the amount of memory we want SQL Server to see. In our environment we know we have 4667840Ki (~4.45GB) of Allocatable memory for user Pods on Nodes so lets set a value lower than that…and to be super safe I’m going to use 3GB. In the code below you can see in the Pod Spec for our mssql container we have a section for resources, limits and a value of memory: “3Gi”.
spec:
hostname: sql3
containers:
- name: mssql
image: 'mcr.microsoft.com/mssql/server:2017-CU16-ubuntu'
ports:
- containerPort: 1433
env:
- name: ACCEPT_EULA
value: "Y"
- name: SA_PASSWORD
valueFrom:
secretKeyRef:
name: mssql
key: SA_PASSWORD
resources:
limits:
memory: "3Gi"
volumeMounts:
- name: mssqldb
mountPath: /var/opt/mssql
volumes:
- name: mssqldb
persistentVolumeClaim:
claimName: pvc-sql-system-2017
With this configured we limit the amount of memory SQL Server sees to 3GB. Given that the container is running SQL Server on Linux, SQL Server will actually see about 80% of that 2458MB
2019-09-28 14:01:46.16 Server Detected 2458 MB of RAM. This is an informational message; no user action is required.
Summary
With that, I hope you can see why I consider memory settings the number one thing to look out for when deploying SQL Server in Kubernetes. Setting appropriate values will ensure that your SQL Server instance on Kubernetes stays up and running and happily with the other workloads you have running in your cluster. What’s the best value to set? We need to take into account the amount of memory on the Node, the amount of memory we need to run our workload in SQL Server, and the reservations needed by both Kubernetes and SQLPAL. Additionally, we should set max server memory instance level setting inside of SQL Server to limit the amount of memory that’s allocatable. My suggestion to you is to configure both a resource limit at the Pod Spec and configure max server memory at the instance level.
If you want to read more about resource management and Pod eviction check out this resources:
- Managing Compute Resources for Containers
- Configure Out Of Resource Handling
- My Pluralsight Course: Managing the API Server and Pods