Kubernetes: Resource Quotas

When several users or teams share a cluster with a fixed number of nodes, there is a concern that one team could use more than its fair share of resources.

Resource quotas are a tool for administrators to address this concern.

A resource quota, defined by a ResourceQuota object, provides constraints that limit aggregate resource consumption per namespace. A ResourceQuota can also limit the quantity of objects that can be created in a namespace by API kind, as well as the total amount of infrastructure resources that may be consumed by API objects found in that namespace.

Caution:

Neither contention nor changes to quota will affect already created resources.

How Kubernetes ResourceQuotas work

ResourceQuotas work like this:

• Different teams work in different namespaces. This separation can be enforced with RBAC or any other authorization mechanism.

• A cluster administrator creates at least one ResourceQuota for each namespace.

  • To make sure the enforcement stays enforced, the cluster administrator should also restrict access to delete or update that ResourceQuota; for example, by defining a ValidatingAdmissionPolicy.

• Users create resources (pods, services, etc.) in the namespace, and the quota system tracks usage to ensure it does not exceed hard resource limits defined in a ResourceQuota.

  You can apply a scope to a ResourceQuota to limit where it applies,

• If creating or updating a resource violates a quota constraint, the control plane rejects that request with HTTP status code 403 Forbidden. The error includes a message explaining the constraint that would have been violated.

• If quotas are enabled in a namespace for resource such as cpu and memory, users must specify requests or limits for those values when they define a Pod; otherwise, the quota system may reject pod creation.

  The resource quota walkthrough shows an example of how to avoid this problem.

Note:

• You can define a LimitRange to force defaults on pods that make no compute resource requirements (so that users don't have to remember to do that).

You often do not create Pods directly; for example, you more usually create a workload management object such as a Deployment. If you create a Deployment that tries to use more resources than are available, the creation of the Deployment (or other workload management object) succeeds, but the Deployment may not be able to get all of the Pods it manages to exist. In that case you can check the status of the Deployment, for example with kubectl describe, to see what has happened.

• For cpu and memory resources, ResourceQuotas enforce that every (new) pod in that namespace sets a limit for that resource. If you enforce a resource quota in a namespace for either cpu or memory, you and other clients, must specify either requests or limits for that resource, for every new Pod you submit. If you don't, the control plane may reject admission for that Pod.
• For other resources: ResourceQuota works and will ignore pods in the namespace without setting a limit or request for that resource. It means that you can create a new pod without limit/request for ephemeral storage if the resource quota limits the ephemeral storage of this namespace.

You can use a LimitRange to automatically set a default request for these resources.

The name of a ResourceQuota object must be a valid DNS subdomain name.

Examples of policies that could be created using namespaces and quotas are:

• In a cluster with a capacity of 32 GiB RAM, and 16 cores, let team A use 20 GiB and 10 cores, let B use 10GiB and 4 cores, and hold 2GiB and 2 cores in reserve for future allocation.
• Limit the "testing" namespace to using 1 core and 1GiB RAM. Let the "production" namespace use any amount.

In the case where the total capacity of the cluster is less than the sum of the quotas of the namespaces, there may be contention for resources. This is handled on a first-come-first-served basis.

Enabling Resource Quota

ResourceQuota support is enabled by default for many Kubernetes distributions. It is enabled when the API server --enable-admission-plugins= flag has ResourceQuota as one of its arguments.

A resource quota is enforced in a particular namespace when there is a ResourceQuota in that namespace.

Types of resource quota

The ResourceQuota mechanism lets you enforce different kinds of limits. This section describes the types of limit that you can enforce.

Quota for infrastructure resources

You can limit the total sum of compute resources that can be requested in a given namespace.

The following resource types are supported:

Resource Name	Description
limits.cpu	Across all pods in a non-terminal state, the sum of CPU limits cannot exceed this value.
limits.memory	Across all pods in a non-terminal state, the sum of memory limits cannot exceed this value.
requests.cpu	Across all pods in a non-terminal state, the sum of CPU requests cannot exceed this value.
requests.memory	Across all pods in a non-terminal state, the sum of memory requests cannot exceed this value.
hugepages-<size>	Across all pods in a non-terminal state, the number of huge page requests of the specified size cannot exceed this value.
cpu	Same as requests.cpu
memory	Same as requests.memory

Quota for extended resources

In addition to the resources mentioned above, in release 1.10, quota support for extended resources is added.

As overcommit is not allowed for extended resources, it makes no sense to specify both requests and limits for the same extended resource in a quota. So for extended resources, only quota items with prefix requests. are allowed.

Take the GPU resource as an example, if the resource name is nvidia.com/gpu, and you want to limit the total number of GPUs requested in a namespace to 4, you can define a quota as follows:

• requests.nvidia.com/gpu: 4

See Viewing and Setting Quotas for more details.

Quota for DRA resource claims

DRA (Dynamic Resource Allocation) resource claims can request DRA resources by device class. For an example device class named examplegpu, you want to limit the total number of GPUs requested in a namespace to 4, you can define a quota as follows:

• examplegpu.deviceclass.resource.k8s.io/devices: 4

When Extended Resource allocation by DRA is enabled, the same device class named examplegpu can be requested via extended resource either explicitly when the device class's ExtendedResourceName field is given, say, example.com/gpu, then you can define a quota as follows:

• requests.example.com/gpu: 4

or implicitly using the derived extended resource name from device class name examplegpu, you can define a quota as follows:

• requests.deviceclass.resource.kubernetes.io/examplegpu: 4

All devices requested from resource claims or extended resources are counted towards all three quotas listed above. The extended resource quota e.g. requests.example.com/gpu: 4, also counts the devices provided by device plugin.

See Viewing and Setting Quotas for more details.

Quota for storage

You can limit the total sum of storage for volumes that can be requested in a given namespace.

In addition, you can limit consumption of storage resources based on associated StorageClass.

Resource Name	Description
requests.storage	Across all persistent volume claims, the sum of storage requests cannot exceed this value.
persistentvolumeclaims	The total number of PersistentVolumeClaims that can exist in the namespace.
<storage-class-name>.storageclass.storage.k8s.io/requests.storage	Across all persistent volume claims associated with the <storage-class-name>, the sum of storage requests cannot exceed this value.
<storage-class-name>.storageclass.storage.k8s.io/persistentvolumeclaims	Across all persistent volume claims associated with the <storage-class-name>, the total number of persistent volume claims that can exist in the namespace.

For example, if you want to quota storage with gold StorageClass separate from a bronze StorageClass, you can define a quota as follows:

• gold.storageclass.storage.k8s.io/requests.storage: 500Gi
• bronze.storageclass.storage.k8s.io/requests.storage: 100Gi

Quota for local ephemeral storage

Feature state: Alpha since Kubernetes v1.8

Resource Name	Description
requests.ephemeral-storage	Across all pods in the namespace, the sum of local ephemeral storage requests cannot exceed this value.
limits.ephemeral-storage	Across all pods in the namespace, the sum of local ephemeral storage limits cannot exceed this value.
ephemeral-storage	Same as requests.ephemeral-storage.

Note:

When using a CRI container runtime, container logs will count against the ephemeral storage quota. This can result in the unexpected eviction of pods that have exhausted their storage quotas.

Refer to Logging Architecture for details.

Quota on object count

You can set quota for the total number of one particular resource kind in the Kubernetes API, using the following syntax:

• count/<resource>.<group> for resources from non-core API groups
• count/<resource> for resources from the core API group

For example, the PodTemplate API is in the core API group and so if you want to limit the number of PodTemplate objects in a namespace, you use count/podtemplates.

These types of quotas are useful to protect against exhaustion of control plane storage. For example, you may want to limit the number of Secrets in a server given their large size. Too many Secrets in a cluster can actually prevent servers and controllers from starting. You can set a quota for Jobs to protect against a poorly configured CronJob. CronJobs that create too many Jobs in a namespace can lead to a denial of service.

If you define a quota this way, it applies to Kubernetes' APIs that are part of the API server, and to any custom resources backed by a CustomResourceDefinition. For example, to create a quota on a widgets custom resource in the example.com API group, use count/widgets.example.com. If you use API aggregation to add additional, custom APIs that are not defined as CustomResourceDefinitions, the core Kubernetes control plane does not enforce quota for the aggregated API. The extension API server is expected to provide quota enforcement if that's appropriate for the custom API.

Generic syntax

This is a list of common examples of object kinds that you may want to put under object count quota, listed by the configuration string that you would use.

• count/pods
• count/persistentvolumeclaims
• count/services
• count/secrets
• count/configmaps
• count/deployments.apps
• count/replicasets.apps
• count/statefulsets.apps
• count/jobs.batch
• count/cronjobs.batch

Specialized syntax

There is another syntax only to set the same type of quota, that only works for certain API kinds. The following types are supported:

Resource Name	Description
configmaps	The total number of ConfigMaps that can exist in the namespace.
persistentvolumeclaims	The total number of PersistentVolumeClaims that can exist in the namespace.
pods	The total number of Pods in a non-terminal state that can exist in the namespace. A pod is in a terminal state if .status.phase in (Failed, Succeeded) is true.
replicationcontrollers	The total number of ReplicationControllers that can exist in the namespace.
resourcequotas	The total number of ResourceQuotas that can exist in the namespace.
services	The total number of Services that can exist in the namespace.
services.loadbalancers	The total number of Services of type LoadBalancer that can exist in the namespace.
services.nodeports	The total number of NodePorts allocated to Services of type NodePort or LoadBalancer that can exist in the namespace.
secrets	The total number of Secrets that can exist in the namespace.

For example, pods quota counts and enforces a maximum on the number of pods created in a single namespace that are not terminal. You might want to set a pods quota on a namespace to avoid the case where a user creates many small pods and exhausts the cluster's supply of Pod IPs.

You can find more examples on Viewing and Setting Quotas.

Viewing and Setting Quotas

kubectl supports creating, updating, and viewing quotas:

kubectl create namespace myspace

cat <<EOF > compute-resources.yaml
apiVersion: v1
kind: ResourceQuota
metadata:
  name: compute-resources
spec:
  hard:
    requests.cpu: "1"
    requests.memory: "1Gi"
    limits.cpu: "2"
    limits.memory: "2Gi"
    requests.nvidia.com/gpu: 4
EOF

kubectl create -f ./compute-resources.yaml --namespace=myspace

cat <<EOF > object-counts.yaml
apiVersion: v1
kind: ResourceQuota
metadata:
  name: object-counts
spec:
  hard:
    configmaps: "10"
    persistentvolumeclaims: "4"
    pods: "4"
    replicationcontrollers: "20"
    secrets: "10"
    services: "10"
    services.loadbalancers: "2"
EOF

kubectl create -f ./object-counts.yaml --namespace=myspace

kubectl get quota --namespace=myspace

NAME                    AGE
compute-resources       30s
object-counts           32s

kubectl describe quota compute-resources --namespace=myspace

Name:                    compute-resources
Namespace:               myspace
Resource                 Used  Hard
--------                 ----  ----
limits.cpu               0     2
limits.memory            0     2Gi
requests.cpu             0     1
requests.memory          0     1Gi
requests.nvidia.com/gpu  0     4

kubectl describe quota object-counts --namespace=myspace

Name:                   object-counts
Namespace:              myspace
Resource                Used    Hard
--------                ----    ----
configmaps              0       10
persistentvolumeclaims  0       4
pods                    0       4
replicationcontrollers  0       20
secrets                 1       10
services                0       10
services.loadbalancers  0       2

kubectl also supports object count quota for all standard namespaced resources using the syntax count/<resource>.<group>:

kubectl create namespace myspace

kubectl create quota test --hard=count/deployments.apps=2,count/replicasets.apps=4,count/pods=3,count/secrets=4 --namespace=myspace

kubectl create deployment nginx --image=nginx --namespace=myspace --replicas=2

kubectl describe quota --namespace=myspace

Name:                         test
Namespace:                    myspace
Resource                      Used  Hard
--------                      ----  ----
count/deployments.apps        1     2
count/pods                    2     3
count/replicasets.apps        1     4
count/secrets                 1     4

Quota and Cluster Capacity

ResourceQuotas are independent of the cluster capacity. They are expressed in absolute units. So, if you add nodes to your cluster, this does not automatically give each namespace the ability to consume more resources.

Sometimes more complex policies may be desired, such as:

• Proportionally divide total cluster resources among several teams.
• Allow each tenant to grow resource usage as needed, but have a generous limit to prevent accidental resource exhaustion.
• Detect demand from one namespace, add nodes, and increase quota.

Such policies could be implemented using ResourceQuotas as building blocks, by writing a "controller" that watches the quota usage and adjusts the quota hard limits of each namespace according to other signals.

Note that resource quota divides up aggregate cluster resources, but it creates no restrictions around nodes: pods from several namespaces may run on the same node.

Quota scopes

Each quota can have an associated set of scopes. A quota will only measure usage for a resource if it matches the intersection of enumerated scopes.

When a scope is added to the quota, it limits the number of resources it supports to those that pertain to the scope. Resources specified on the quota outside of the allowed set results in a validation error.

Kubernetes 1.37 supports the following scopes:

Scope	Description
BestEffort	Match pods that have best effort quality of service.
CrossNamespacePodAffinity	Match pods that have cross-namespace pod (anti)affinity terms.
NotBestEffort	Match pods that do not have best effort quality of service.
NotTerminating	Match pods where .spec.activeDeadlineSeconds is nil
PriorityClass	Match pods that references the specified priority class.
Terminating	Match pods where .spec.activeDeadlineSeconds >= 0
VolumeAttributesClass	Match PersistentVolumeClaims that reference the specified volume attributes class.

ResourceQuotas with a scope set can also have a optional scopeSelector field. You define one or more match expressions that specify an operators and, if relevant, a set of values to match. For example:

  scopeSelector:
    matchExpressions:
      - scopeName: BestEffort # Match pods that have best effort quality of service
        operator: Exists # optional; "Exists" is implied for BestEffort scope

The scopeSelector supports the following values in the operator field:

• In
• NotIn
• Exists
• DoesNotExist

If the operator is In or NotIn, the values field must have at least one value. For example:

  scopeSelector:
    matchExpressions:
      - scopeName: PriorityClass
        operator: In
        values:
          - middle

If the operator is Exists or DoesNotExist, the values field must NOT be specified.

Best effort Pods scope

This scope only tracks quota consumed by Pods. It only matches pods that have the best effort QoS class.

The operator for a scopeSelector must be Exists.

Not-best-effort Pods scope

This scope only tracks quota consumed by Pods. It only matches pods that have the Guaranteed or Burstable QoS class.

The operator for a scopeSelector must be Exists.

Non-terminating Pods scope

This scope only tracks quota consumed by Pods that are not terminating. The operator for a scopeSelector must be Exists.

A Pod is not terminating if the .spec.activeDeadlineSeconds field is unset.

You can use a ResourceQuota with this scope to manage the following resources:

• count.pods
• pods
• cpu
• memory
• requests.cpu
• requests.memory
• limits.cpu
• limits.memory

Terminating Pods scope

This scope only tracks quota consumed by Pods that are terminating. The operator for a scopeSelector must be Exists.

A Pod is considered as terminating if the .spec.activeDeadlineSeconds field is set to any number.

You can use a ResourceQuota with this scope to manage the following resources:

• count.pods
• pods
• cpu
• memory
• requests.cpu
• requests.memory
• limits.cpu
• limits.memory

Cross-namespace pod affinity scope

Feature state: Stable since Kubernetes v1.24

You can use CrossNamespacePodAffinity quota scope to limit which namespaces are allowed to have pods with affinity terms that cross namespaces. Specifically, it controls which pods are allowed to set namespaces or namespaceSelector fields in pod (anti)affinity terms.

Preventing users from using cross-namespace affinity terms might be desired since a pod with anti-affinity constraints can block pods from all other namespaces from getting scheduled in a failure domain.

Using this scope, you (as a cluster administrator) can prevent certain namespaces - such as foo-ns in the example below - from having pods that use cross-namespace pod affinity. You configure this creating a ResourceQuota object in that namespace with CrossNamespacePodAffinity scope and hard limit of 0:

apiVersion: v1
kind: ResourceQuota
metadata:
  name: disable-cross-namespace-affinity
  namespace: foo-ns
spec:
  hard:
    pods: "0"
  scopeSelector:
    matchExpressions:
    - scopeName: CrossNamespacePodAffinity
      operator: Exists

If you want to disallow using namespaces and namespaceSelector by default, and only allow it for specific namespaces, you could configure CrossNamespacePodAffinity as a limited resource by setting the kube-apiserver flag --admission-control-config-file to the path of the following configuration file:

apiVersion: apiserver.config.k8s.io/v1
kind: AdmissionConfiguration
plugins:
- name: "ResourceQuota"
  configuration:
    apiVersion: apiserver.config.k8s.io/v1
    kind: ResourceQuotaConfiguration
    limitedResources:
    - resource: pods
      matchScopes:
      - scopeName: CrossNamespacePodAffinity
        operator: Exists

With the above configuration, pods can use namespaces and namespaceSelector in pod affinity only if the namespace where they are created have a resource quota object with CrossNamespacePodAffinity scope and a hard limit greater than or equal to the number of pods using those fields.

PriorityClass scope

Feature state: Stable since Kubernetes v1.17

A ResourceQuota with a PriorityClass scope only matches Pods that have a particular priority class, and only if any scopeSelector in the quota spec selects a particular Pod.

Pods can be created at a specific priority. You can control a pod's consumption of system resources based on a pod's priority, by using the scopeSelector field in the quota spec.

When quota is scoped for PriorityClass using the scopeSelector field, the ResourceQuota can only track (and limit) the following resources:

• pods
• cpu
• memory
• ephemeral-storage
• limits.cpu
• limits.memory
• limits.ephemeral-storage
• requests.cpu
• requests.memory
• requests.ephemeral-storage

Example

This example creates a ResourceQuota matches it with pods at specific priorities. The example works as follows:

• Pods in the cluster have one of the three PriorityClasses, "low", "medium", "high".
  • If you want to try this out, use a testing cluster and set up those three PriorityClasses before you continue.
• One quota object is created for each priority.

Inspect this set of ResourceQuotas:

policy/quota.yaml Open diagram: Documentation illustration

apiVersion: v1
kind: ResourceQuota
metadata:
  name: pods-high
spec:
  hard:
    cpu: "1000"
    memory: "200Gi"
    pods: "10"
  scopeSelector:
    matchExpressions:
    - operator: In
      scopeName: PriorityClass
      values: ["high"]
---
apiVersion: v1
kind: ResourceQuota
metadata:
  name: pods-medium
spec:
  hard:
    cpu: "10"
    memory: "20Gi"
    pods: "10"
  scopeSelector:
    matchExpressions:
    - operator: In
      scopeName: PriorityClass
      values: ["medium"]
---
apiVersion: v1
kind: ResourceQuota
metadata:
  name: pods-low
spec:
  hard:
    cpu: "5"
    memory: "10Gi"
    pods: "10"
  scopeSelector:
    matchExpressions:
    - operator: In
      scopeName: PriorityClass
      values: ["low"]

Apply the YAML using kubectl create.

kubectl create -f https://k8s.io/examples/policy/quota.yaml

resourcequota/pods-high created
resourcequota/pods-medium created
resourcequota/pods-low created

Verify that Used quota is 0 using kubectl describe quota.

kubectl describe quota

Name:       pods-high
Namespace:  default
Resource    Used  Hard
--------    ----  ----
cpu         0     1k
memory      0     200Gi
pods        0     10


Name:       pods-low
Namespace:  default
Resource    Used  Hard
--------    ----  ----
cpu         0     5
memory      0     10Gi
pods        0     10


Name:       pods-medium
Namespace:  default
Resource    Used  Hard
--------    ----  ----
cpu         0     10
memory      0     20Gi
pods        0     10

Create a pod with priority "high".

policy/high-priority-pod.yaml Open diagram: Documentation illustration

apiVersion: v1
kind: Pod
metadata:
  name: high-priority
spec:
  containers:
  - name: high-priority
    image: ubuntu
    command: ["/bin/sh"]
    args: ["-c", "while true; do echo hello; sleep 10;done"]
    resources:
      requests:
        memory: "10Gi"
        cpu: "500m"
      limits:
        memory: "10Gi"
        cpu: "500m"
  priorityClassName: high

To create the Pod:

kubectl create -f https://k8s.io/examples/policy/high-priority-pod.yaml

Verify that "Used" stats for "high" priority quota, pods-high, has changed and that the other two quotas are unchanged.

kubectl describe quota

Name:       pods-high
Namespace:  default
Resource    Used  Hard
--------    ----  ----
cpu         500m  1k
memory      10Gi  200Gi
pods        1     10


Name:       pods-low
Namespace:  default
Resource    Used  Hard
--------    ----  ----
cpu         0     5
memory      0     10Gi
pods        0     10


Name:       pods-medium
Namespace:  default
Resource    Used  Hard
--------    ----  ----
cpu         0     10
memory      0     20Gi
pods        0     10

Limiting PriorityClass consumption by default

It may be desired that pods at a particular priority, such as "cluster-services", should be allowed in a namespace, if and only if, a matching quota object exists.

With this mechanism, operators are able to restrict usage of certain high priority classes to a limited number of namespaces and not every namespace will be able to consume these priority classes by default.

To enforce this, kube-apiserver flag --admission-control-config-file should be used to pass path to the following configuration file:

apiVersion: apiserver.config.k8s.io/v1
kind: AdmissionConfiguration
plugins:
- name: "ResourceQuota"
  configuration:
    apiVersion: apiserver.config.k8s.io/v1
    kind: ResourceQuotaConfiguration
    limitedResources:
    - resource: pods
      matchScopes:
      - scopeName: PriorityClass
        operator: In
        values: ["cluster-services"]

Then, create a resource quota object in the kube-system namespace:

policy/priority-class-resourcequota.yaml Open diagram: Documentation illustration

apiVersion: v1
kind: ResourceQuota
metadata:
  name: pods-cluster-services
spec:
  scopeSelector:
    matchExpressions:
      - operator : In
        scopeName: PriorityClass
        values: ["cluster-services"]

kubectl apply -f https://k8s.io/examples/policy/priority-class-resourcequota.yaml -n kube-system

resourcequota/pods-cluster-services created

In this case, a pod creation will be allowed if:

1. the Pod's priorityClassName is not specified.
2. the Pod's priorityClassName is specified to a value other than cluster-services.
3. the Pod's priorityClassName is set to cluster-services, it is to be created in the kube-system namespace, and it has passed the resource quota check.

A Pod creation request is rejected if its priorityClassName is set to cluster-services and it is to be created in a namespace other than kube-system.

VolumeAttributesClass scope

Feature state: Stable since Kubernetes v1.36More information about this feature

This is a stable feature in Kubernetes, and has been since version v1.36. It was first available in the v1.29 release. You can no longer disable or opt out of this feature or behavior (it is locked); if you explicitly set a value for the associated feature gate VolumeAttributesClass, Kubernetes ignores it but does not report any error.

This scope only tracks quota consumed by PersistentVolumeClaims.

PersistentVolumeClaims can be created with a specific VolumeAttributesClass, and might be modified after creation. You can control a PVC's consumption of storage resources based on the associated VolumeAttributesClasses, by using the scopeSelector field in the quota spec.

The PVC references the associated VolumeAttributesClass by the following fields:

• spec.volumeAttributesClassName
• status.currentVolumeAttributesClassName
• status.modifyVolumeStatus.targetVolumeAttributesClassName

A relevant ResourceQuota is matched and consumed only if the ResourceQuota has a scopeSelector that selects the PVC.

When the quota is scoped for the volume attributes class using the scopeSelector field, the quota object is restricted to track only the following resources:

• persistentvolumeclaims
• requests.storage

Read Limit Storage Consumption to learn more about this.