Troubleshooting in Kubernetes: A Strategic Guide

How to debug issues in Kubernetes when things go awry

Photo by Tobias Tullius on Unsplash

Kubernetes can be a tricky platform, especially when it comes to debugging and troubleshooting issues. Most of this difficulty comes from the lack of detailed error messages and the complexity of the system. Moreover, the sheer number of moving parts in the container orchestration flow — and only a handful of states to represent that flow — adds to the challenge. For instance, as you will see, there are at least six plausible reasons why a Pod could be stuck in the ContainerCreating or CrashLoppBackOff state.

Having rigorously used Kubernetes for more than three years now, we have been confronted by a long list of issues — all equally subtle and complex — although most of them predominantly fall under the following three umbrellas:

1. Pods stuck in ContainerCreating state
2. CrashLoopBackOff and periodic restarts
3. Network connectivity issues

Behind each of these, as you will find out, is a multitude of causes, and this article will help you understand those — and the why behind it. The goal is to not give you a list of commands or tools (that can only solve a set of problems), but rather, it’s to elevate your understanding and help build an intuition…