What is the kubectl top?

Question

Accepted Answer

**kubectl top** — **resource monitoring** for Pod/Node.

```bash
# Pod resources
kubectl top pods
kubectl top pods --sort-by=cpu
kubectl top pods --sort-by=memory
kubectl top pods -n production
kubectl top pod pod_name --containers

# Node resources
kubectl top nodes
kubectl top nodes --sort-by=cpu
kubectl top nodes --sort-by=memory

# Metrics (requires metrics-server)
kubectl get --raw "/apis/metrics.k8s.io/v1beta1/nodes"
kubectl get --raw "/apis/metrics.k8s.io/v1beta1/pods"

# Limits and requests
kubectl describe node node_name | grep -A 5 "Allocated resources"
kubectl describe pod pod_name | grep -A 3 "Requests:|Limits:"

# Auto-scaling
kubectl get hpa
kubectl describe hpa myapp-hpa
```

**Metrics:**
- CPU: millicores (1000m = 1 core).
- Memory: bytes.
- Network: bytes in/out.
- Storage: bytes read/write.

DevOps: What is the kubectl top?