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Understand Kubernetes memory metrics without firing false OOM alerts

Separate page cache, working set, RSS, limits, and OOMKilled events so your Prometheus dashboards and alerts help instead of panic.

A practical guide to diagnosing Kubernetes container memory with Prometheus and Grafana without confusing usage, working set, RSS, or reclaimable page cache.

Created: April 26, 2026

Published: April 26, 2026

Estimated time40 min

LevelIntermediate

Before you startPrometheus scraping kubelet/cAdvisor metrics

PlatformsLinux / Docker

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Linux

A kubectl, Prometheus, and promtool flow to separate real memory pressure from reclaimable page cache.

kubectl with read access to the clusterPrometheus scraping cAdvisor/kubelet metricsOptional promtool for rule validation

List recent OOMKilled events

kubectl get events -A --field-selector reason=OOMKilling --sort-by=.lastTimestamp

Check memory limits per pod

kubectl get pods -A -o custom-columns='NS:.metadata.namespace,POD:.metadata.name,CONTAINER:.spec.containers[*].name,LIMITS:.spec.containers[*].resources.limits.memory'

Validate rules before rollout

promtool check rules k8s-memory-alerts.yml

Also available inEntender las métricas de memoria de Kubernetes sin disparar falsas alertas de OOM

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