Collection Profiles

Control which metrics are collected via the kpod.profile setting.

Profile Comparison

Collector	minimal	standard	comprehensive
CPU scheduling	yes	yes	yes
Network TCP (eBPF)	-	yes	yes
TCP drops (eBPF)	-	yes	yes
Memory OOM	yes	yes	yes
Memory page faults	-	yes	yes
Block I/O latency (eBPF)	-	yes	yes
Page cache stats (eBPF)	-	yes	yes
Hardware IRQ latency (eBPF)	-	-	yes
Software IRQ latency (eBPF)	-	-	yes
Process exec/fork/exit (eBPF)	-	-	yes
Syscall tracing	-	-	yes
Disk I/O (cgroup)	yes	yes	yes
Interface network (cgroup)	-	yes	yes
Filesystem (cgroup)	-	yes	yes

Estimated cardinality per pod: minimal ~20, standard ~39, comprehensive ~69 time series.

Choosing a Profile

• minimal — Low overhead, essential metrics only. Good for large clusters where Prometheus cardinality is a concern.
• standard (default) — Balanced coverage. Recommended for most production clusters.
• comprehensive — Full observability including syscall tracing, IRQ latency, and process lifecycle. Higher cardinality.

Setting the Profile

HelmEnvironment Variable

config:
  profile: standard

KPOD_PROFILE=comprehensive

Custom Profile

Use custom profile with per-collector overrides:

config:
  profile: custom
  collectors:
    cpu: true
    network: true
    syscall: false
    biolatency: true
    cachestat: false
    tcpdrop: true
    hardirqs: false
    softirqs: false
    execsnoop: true
    diskIO: true
    ifaceNet: true
    filesystem: true

Cardinality Planning

For large clusters, use the standard profile to keep Prometheus cardinality under 4M time series:

Cluster Size	Recommended Profile	Estimated Time Series
< 100 pods	comprehensive	~7,000
100–1,000 pods	standard	~39,000
1,000–10,000 pods	standard	~390,000
10,000–100,000 pods	minimal or standard	~2M–3.9M