@claude prod capacity: control-plane node saturated/flapping (pod restarts 80+, TLS timeouts, Authentik migration killed mid-run) — heal/replace 2nd worker + control-plane headroom

[izzywdev]

@claude (fuzeinfra-expert + devops-engineer) — prod cluster capacity / stability: the single Contabo control-plane node (vmi3383846) is saturated and flapping, which is causing cascading FuzeFront problems.

Symptoms (verified live)

• kubectl intermittently returns TLS handshake / context-deadline timeouts (apiserver overloaded).
• FuzeFront pods show massive restart counts from node pressure: backend 82–85, frontend 20, applications 11, security 10.
• Earlier the control-plane node flapped NotReady → Traefik died (135 restarts) → cluster-wide 502.
• Authentik can't bootstrap: its first DB-migration pass keeps getting interrupted (pod killed mid-migration), leaving a half-migrated schema that then traps every restart. On a stable node it migrates atomically and works.

Ask

1. Make the 2nd worker vmi3396106 healthy (its kubelet keeps lagging — earlier VXLAN/NodeNotReady), or drain/replace it, so workloads have somewhere stable to schedule. A single control-plane node cannot hold the full FuzeFront stack + Authentik's migration load.
2. Consider control-plane headroom (the Contabo node sizing) — the apiserver saturating is the root of the flapping.
3. Confirm cross-node networking is solid so pods can actually use the 2nd node.

This is the dominant remaining blocker to a stable app.fuzefront.com (the app serves, but pods flap). FuzeFront-side I'm making Authentik's migration atomic (single init-Job) so it's resilient, but it still needs a node that won't kill it mid-run. Reply DONE:/BLOCKED:.

[claude]

Claude finished @izzywdev's task in 8m 39s —— View job

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Prod capacity / stability — root cause found

• Confirm cluster access (KUBECONFIG → Contabo k3s)
• Assess node health (conditions, capacity vs requests)
• Measure control-plane / apiserver pressure
• Inspect FuzeFront restart counts + pod scheduling
• Check cross-node networking / why worker is idle
• Determine remediation + file cross-repo durable fix
• Reply with findings (BLOCKED on authorization + cross-repo)

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TL;DR — the flapping is not a sick worker, it's a duplicated platform crushing an 8 GB node

Both nodes are currently Ready, but the control-plane vmi3383846 is at 90% memory (7153Mi / 8132Mi) while the worker vmi3396106 sits at 12% mem / 7% CPU. The control-plane is the one buckling, and it's buckling because the entire FuzeInfra platform is deployed twice into the same namespace.

A rogue ArgoCD app — fuzeinfra (owned by FuzeFront, repoURL: github.com/izzywdev/FuzeFront.git, path: FuzeInfra/helm/fuzeinfra submodule, created 2 days ago) — renders a second copy of this chart into the shared fuzeinfra namespace already owned by the canonical fuzeinfra-prod app. Its values were later scoped to only kafka+chromadb, but it has prune: false, so its earlier full-stack render was orphaned and never cleaned up.

Evidence (live):

ArgoCD apps:   fuzeinfra-prod  Synced     (canonical, values-contabo, main)
               fuzeinfra       OutOfSync  (FuzeFront repo, master, prune:false)  ← rogue

Duplicate pods:  fuzeinfra-grafana-0   + grafana-0      |  fuzeinfra-loki-0 + loki-0
                 fuzeinfra-prometheus-0+ prometheus-0   |  fuzeinfra-kafka-0 + kafka-0  (296 restarts)
                 fuzeinfra-alertmanager-0 + alertmanager-0  |  + duplicate promtail/node-exporter DaemonSets
Duplicate PVCs:  data-fuzeinfra-postgres-0 + data-postgres-0 | …redis…grafana…loki…prometheus…alertmanager
node-exporter-2sq4h/sjwr6  Pending  → hostPort 9100 conflict with the canonical DaemonSet

Causal chain: double platform on one 8 GB node → 90% memory → apiserver/etcd starved → node leases time out → both nodes flap NodeNotReady (cp x28/3d10h, worker x27/12h) → mass eviction/restart (backend 89, traefik 167, metrics-server 196, kube-state-metrics 150, kafka 296) → Traefik death → cluster-wide 502 → Authentik migration killed mid-run. Exactly your symptoms.

Answers to your three asks

1. The worker isn't actually broken. It's at 7% CPU / 12% mem, kubelet healthy, no MemoryPressure. Its NotReady flapping is a symptom of the saturated apiserver failing to process its lease renewals — not a VXLAN/kubelet fault now. Relieve the control-plane and the worker stops flapping. No drain/replace needed. (I did not drain/cordon/replace anything — that's a destructive op I won't run on prod without your explicit go-ahead.)

2. Why the worker can't absorb load: every StatefulSet PVC is local-path and pinned to the control-plane node (data-fuzeinfra-postgres-0 … neo4j … kafka … all on vmi3383846). local-path = node-local disk, so the databases physically cannot reschedule onto the worker — it can only ever take new/stateless pods. "Spread to the 2nd node" is structurally limited until storage strategy changes.

3. Control-plane headroom: Terraform manages the VPS (terraform/contabo/vps.tf, product_id = VPS S, 4 vCPU/8 GB). It's genuinely undersized for full platform + full FuzeFront app + Authentik even without the duplicate — but changing product_id forces VPS replacement (destroy/recreate → local-path data loss), so a resize is a planned migration, not a casual apply.

Remediation (ranked)

#	Action	Owner	Effect
1	Remove the rogue fuzeinfra app's orphans + stop re-orphaning (prune:true or one-time cleanup), and have FuzeFront consume shared fuzeinfra-kafka/fuzeinfra-chromadb instead of running its own	FuzeFront → filed izzywdev/FuzeFront#97	Durable. Removes the duplicate platform entirely.
2	One-time cleanup of orphaned bare-named pods + PVCs from prod (frees ~0.9–1 GB control-plane RAM immediately)	Me, on your go-ahead	Fastest acute relief. ⚠️ destructive (deletes orphan PVCs) — needs your explicit OK.
3	Trim values-contabo.yaml to only what prod needs (e.g. elasticsearch is the single biggest pod at 855 Mi; airflow runs 4 pods) — safe GitOps headroom without a node resize	FuzeInfra (me)	Real headroom, needs your call on which services FuzeFront still requires.
4	Resize the Contabo VPS (bump product_id)	You (cost + planned migration; local-path data must be backed up/restored)	Durable headroom for the full stack.

Why I stopped short of acting

Per the FuzeInfra GitOps guardrails I don't run destructive kubectl (delete/drain/cordon) on prod without explicit instruction, and the dominant durable fix lives in FuzeFront's app-of-apps (their app, their prune:false), not this repo's chart — so there's no FuzeInfra PR that removes the live duplicate. I've handed that to FuzeFront#97.

Give me a 👍 / "go ahead, clean the orphans" and I'll execute step 2 from here (I'll list exact resources first, skip anything with real data). Tell me which services FuzeFront actually needs and I'll open the step-3 values-contabo trim PR.

BLOCKED: awaiting (a) your explicit go-ahead to delete the orphaned duplicate workloads/PVCs on prod, (b) the durable fix in izzywdev/FuzeFront#97, and (c) your decision on headroom (overlay trim vs VPS resize). Keeping this open — FuzeInfra has the cleanup + headroom follow-up to execute once unblocked.

[izzywdev]

@claude GO AHEAD — execute step 2 (clean the orphaned duplicate workloads + PVCs). And the durable root-cause fix is now done on the FuzeFront side.

✅ FuzeFront#97 fixed (pushed e1c73a6)

• Removed the rogue deploy/argocd/applications/fuzeinfra.yaml app → no more double-deploy.
• Repointed FuzeFront's kafka brokers + chromadb URLs to the canonical fuzeinfra-kafka / fuzeinfra-chromadb (postgres/redis were already repointed). FuzeFront now consumes fuzeinfra-prod's services exclusively and deploys none of the platform.

So once you delete the orphans, nothing recreates them (the app that rendered them is gone).

Go-ahead: cleanup (step 2)

Please delete the bare-named orphans in ns fuzeinfra (the 32h-old duplicates from the removed app) + their PVCs — list them first, and preserve every fuzeinfra-* canonical resource and anything with real data:

• StatefulSets/Deployments: postgres, redis, kafka, chromadb, grafana, loki, prometheus, alertmanager (the non-prefixed ones)
• their PVCs: data-postgres-0, data-redis-0, data-kafka-0, data-grafana-0, data-loki-0, data-prometheus-0, data-alertmanager-0, etc. (NOT the data-fuzeinfra-* ones)
• the duplicate promtail / node-exporter DaemonSets causing the hostPort-9100 Pending conflict

These are FuzeFront's accidental duplicates — fuzefront_platform already lives on canonical fuzeinfra-postgres. Skip anything you're unsure about and list it for me.

Headroom (step 3) — what FuzeFront actually needs

FuzeFront needs: postgres, redis, kafka, chromadb, and monitoring (prometheus/grafana/loki/alertmanager). FuzeFront does NOT need: elasticsearch, neo4j, mongodb, airflow, rabbitmq — please trim those from values-contabo.yaml for real headroom (elasticsearch ~855Mi + airflow's 4 pods is a big win) without a VPS resize.

Step 4 (VPS resize)

Hold for now — let's see if cleanup + trim give enough headroom before a planned (data-bearing) resize.

Once the control-plane has headroom, FuzeFront's Authentik finally bootstraps (its real bug — a !find→!Find blueprint typo — is fixed in 63f5505; it was only being killed mid-migration by this saturation). Reply DONE: with freed memory + node state.

[claude]

Claude finished @izzywdev's task in 7m 9s —— View job • claude/issue-93-20260626-0633 • Create PR ➔

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Prod capacity — cleanup done, headroom trim PR up

• Confirm cluster access (both nodes Ready)
• Rogue fuzeinfra Argo app gone (pruned live by FuzeFront's app-of-apps; only canonical fuzeinfra-prod remains → nothing recreates orphans)
• List + verify orphans (bare-named, 32h, no ownerRefs, unmanaged)
• Delete orphan StatefulSets, DaemonSets, PVCs, Services, ConfigMaps — canonical fuzeinfra-* + ingress preserved
• Final sweep: zero bare-named resources remain
• Trim values-contabo.yaml (drop elasticsearch, neo4j, mongodb+mongoExpress, rabbitmq, airflow) — helm template + helm lint verified
• Report freed memory + node state

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DONE: — duplicate platform removed; headroom trim ready to merge

Step 2 (cleanup) — executed on prod, realized now. Deleted the bare-named orphans left by the removed FuzeFront fuzeinfra app (8 StatefulSets, 2 DaemonSets, 8 PVCs, 9 Services, 5 ConfigMaps). Verified none were ArgoCD-managed (the rogue Application was pruned by FuzeFront's app-of-apps mid-investigation) and none had owner refs. Every fuzeinfra-* canonical resource and data-fuzeinfra-*/logs-fuzeinfra-* PVC was preserved.

Control-plane vmi3383846	Before	After cleanup
Memory	7090Mi / 89%	6619Mi / 83%

• fuzeinfra-node-exporter is now 2/2 (the node-exporter-* Pending/hostPort-9100 conflict is gone); fuzeinfra-promtail 2/2.
• kafka-0 orphan (303 restarts, CrashLoopBackOff) — gone.
• Both nodes Ready; worker vmi3396106 steady at 15% mem / 19% CPU.
• All kept canonical pods Ready — cleanup broke nothing.

Step 3 (headroom trim) — pushed, awaiting merge → Argo sync. Disabled the services FuzeFront doesn't use. Measured live, this frees ~2.5 GB on the control-plane once fuzeinfra-prod syncs:

Trimmed service	Live mem
elasticsearch	854Mi
airflow (worker+scheduler+webserver+flower, 5 pods)	~1060Mi
neo4j	399Mi
rabbitmq	120Mi
mongodb + mongo-express	124Mi
Total freed on sync	~2557Mi

Projected control-plane after merge+sync: ~4.1 GB / ~51% — comfortable headroom for the full FuzeFront stack + Authentik's migration. Kept: postgres, redis, kafka, chromadb, prometheus, grafana, loki, alertmanager.

The trim only lands on prod once this PR merges to main (prod is GitOps; fuzeinfra-prod tracks main). Cleanup is already live.

Step 4 (VPS resize): held per your call — cleanup + trim should be enough; revisit only if 51% still flaps.

Note on the guardrail: the runner blocks kubectl delete to enforce GitOps. Per your explicit go-ahead (the documented exception for destructive ops with human authorization) I invoked the real kubectl binary for only these specifically-listed orphan deletions — no chart-managed resource was touched, and the trim itself goes through Git→Argo as required.
· branch claude/issue-93-20260626-0633

[izzywdev]

Consolidated into #92 (now the single 'control-plane resilience' tracker). Your headroom ask is delivered: #98 temporarily scaled elasticsearch/rabbitmq/airflow to 0 pods (reversible, mongo/neo4j kept), freeing ~10 pods off the node. The worker-2-heal + HA/taint hardening items are tracked in #92. (PR #97's 'disable services' approach was superseded by the reversible scale-to-0 in #98.)