feat(monitoring): alert on CNPG WAL archiving and backup failure #523

Merged
k.renner merged 1 commits from fix-cnpg-backup-alerting into master 2026-08-20 04:39:21 +00:00
2 changed files with 82 additions and 0 deletions
@@ -13,6 +13,10 @@ resources:
- prometheusrule-netbird-ingress.yaml
- prometheusrule-velero.yaml
- prometheusrule-woodpecker-rotation.yaml
# CNPG backup health. Seven Postgres clusters ship to Hetzner and nothing
# alerted if that stopped — HetznerBackupEndpointDown only probes the S3
# endpoint, which proves reachability, not that anything was written.
- prometheusrule-cnpg-backup.yaml
- alloy-servicemonitor.yaml
- cnpg-podmonitors.yaml
- home-assistant-servicemonitor.yaml
@@ -0,0 +1,78 @@
apiVersion: monitoring.coreos.com/v1
kind: PrometheusRule
metadata:
name: cnpg-backup
namespace: monitoring
labels:
# kube-prometheus-stack's Prometheus resource selects on this label;
# without it the rule is created but never loaded into Prometheus.
release: kube-prometheus-stack
spec:
groups:
- name: cnpg-backup.rules
rules:
# WHY THIS FILE EXISTS
# Seven Postgres clusters back up to Hetzner and NOTHING alerted if that
# stopped. The only related rule was HetznerBackupEndpointDown, which
# probes the S3 endpoint — it proves the bucket is reachable, not that
# anything was written to it. Same failure shape as the WordPress backup
# that failed nightly for three days against a bucket that was declared
# in tofu but never applied: the status surface looked fine because
# nothing checked the thing that mattered.
- alert: CNPGWalArchiveBacklog
# `ready` counts WAL segments sitting in pg_wal/archive_status waiting
# to be archived. Steady state is 0 across every cluster (verified
# 2026-08-19). A sustained backlog means the archiver is failing:
# point-in-time recovery is silently broken from that moment, and
# pg_wal keeps growing until it fills the PVC and takes Postgres down.
#
# This is the load-bearing alert of the two. It depends only on the
# instance-level collector, so unlike the backup-age metrics below it
# is unaffected by the missing Backup CRs (#522).
#
# Threshold: >5 segments sustained for 30m. Brief non-zero values are
# normal under write bursts — a segment is 16 MiB, so 5 is roughly
# 80 MiB of un-archived WAL, well below anything that threatens the
# volume but far above idle noise.
expr: cnpg_collector_pg_wal_archive_status{value="ready"} > 5
for: 30m
labels:
severity: warning
annotations:
summary: "CNPG WAL archiving is falling behind on {{ $labels.namespace }}/{{ $labels.pod }}"
description: "{{ $value }} WAL segments have been waiting to archive for over 30 minutes. Point-in-time recovery is broken for anything after the last archived segment, and pg_wal will grow until the PVC fills. Check the barman-cloud sidecar logs and the ObjectStore credentials: `kubectl -n {{ $labels.namespace }} logs {{ $labels.pod }} -c plugin-barman-cloud`."
- alert: CNPGBackupFailed
# cnpg_collector_last_failed_backup_timestamp is a unix timestamp, 0
# when no failure is recorded. Guard on > 0 so the epoch-zero default
# is not read as "failed in 1970".
expr: |
cnpg_collector_last_failed_backup_timestamp > 0
and
(time() - cnpg_collector_last_failed_backup_timestamp) < 86400
for: 5m
labels:
severity: warning
annotations:
summary: "CNPG backup failed in the last 24h on {{ $labels.namespace }}/{{ $labels.pod }}"
description: "A base backup for {{ $labels.namespace }}/{{ $labels.pod }} failed within the last 24 hours. Verify what is actually in the bucket rather than trusting CR status — see the barman-cloud-backup-list recipe in kubernetes/apps/home-assistant/MIGRATION-recorder-postgres.md."
# DELIBERATELY ABSENT: a backup-age alert, which is the one you would
# most want here.
#
# The natural expression is
# (time() - cnpg_collector_last_available_backup_timestamp) > 48*3600
# and it CANNOT be used today: that metric reads exactly 0 on every
# instance in the cluster (verified 2026-08-19 across gf-pg, ak-pg-1/2,
# pprl-pg-2/3, im-pg, wp-pg, ha-pg). CNPG has no record of any
# successful backup anywhere, because the Backup CRs it derives that
# from are being deleted within a minute of completing — see #522.
#
# Backups themselves DO work; that was verified independently by
# listing the bucket with barman-cloud-backup-list and restoring a WAL
# segment back out of S3. The gap is in the record, not the data.
#
# Adding the rule now would fire permanently for all seven clusters and
# be silenced within a day, which is worse than not having it. Add it as
# part of resolving #522, once the metric reflects reality.