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feat: Add access mode metric for PersistentVolumes

Open viragvoros opened this issue 2 weeks ago • 4 comments

What this PR does / why we need it: This PR adds a kube_persistentvolume_access_mode metric that exposes the access modes of PersistentVolume objects, in a way that mirrors the existing PVC access mode metric.

At the moment, if we want to filter or aggregate PersistentVolumes by access mode (e.g. ReadWriteOnce, ReadWriteMany, ReadOnlyMany), we have to rely on kube_persistentvolumeclaim_access_mode and join through PVC metrics. That forces us to scrape the PVC access mode metrics even when we only care about PVs, and increases metric cardinality.

By exposing a dedicated PV access mode metric with a small label set, we can:

  • filter and aggregate PVs directly by access mode
  • avoid scraping PVC access mode metrics in setups where they are not otherwise needed, while still keeping metric cardinality low.

Details of the change

  • Add kube_persistentvolume_access_mode metric in the PV store:
    • creates one sample for each access mode a PersistentVolume lists
    • access_mode label uses the standard Kubernetes access modes (ReadWriteOnce, ReadOnlyMany, ReadWriteMany, etc.)
    • metric follows a similar style as the existing PVC access mode metric
  • Update internal/store/persistentvolume_test.go
    • add test coverage for the new PV access mode metric
  • Update PV metrics documentation

How does this change affect the cardinality of KSM: Previously, dashboards and alerts that needed PV access mode information had to join against PVC access mode metrics and therefore scrape kube_persistentvolumeclaim_access_mode, which may have higher cardinality in large clusters. With kube_persistentvolume_access_mode, users can query PV access modes directly from the PV metrics.

viragvoros avatar Dec 02 '25 17:12 viragvoros

CLA Signed

The committers listed above are authorized under a signed CLA.

  • :white_check_mark: login: viragvoros / name: Virag Vörös (d01f7e896a7cc9170f64d44cd2272ff822475004)

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k8s-ci-robot avatar Dec 02 '25 17:12 k8s-ci-robot

/assign /triage accepted

dgrisonnet avatar Dec 12 '25 15:12 dgrisonnet

[APPROVALNOTIFIER] This PR is NOT APPROVED

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k8s-ci-robot avatar Dec 15 '25 15:12 k8s-ci-robot

I wonder if it's worth adding a new metric here or enhancing kube_persistentvolume_volume_mode instead?

mrueg avatar Dec 19 '25 13:12 mrueg