monitoring

GuestVCPUQueueHighWarning

Meaning

A VirtualMachineInstance (VMI) reported a guest CPU run‑queue length greater than 10 runnable or uninterruptible threads within the most‑recent scrape window (120s). The run‑queue length is derived from guest_load_1m – vCPU_count.

Impact

• Moderate CPU contention inside the guest; latency may spike but workload still progresses.
• Early signal that the VM might need additional vCPUs or that a short‑lived process is causing bursts.

Diagnosis

1. Confirm queue length

   kubevirt_vmi_guest_vcpu_queue{namespace="$NS",name="$VM"}
   

2. Check host CPU usage

   rate(kubevirt_vmi_cpu_usage_seconds_total{namespace="$NS",name="$VM"}[2m])
   

3. Inspect guest processes virtctl console <vm> → top -H or pidstat -u 1
4. Verify vCPU allocation

   oc get vmi $VM -ojsonpath='{.spec.domain.cpu}'
   

Mitigation

| Horizon | Action | |———|——–| | Immediate | Optionally live‑migrate the VM to a quieter node or throttle | | | noisy processes. | | Short term | Hot‑plug / increase vCPUs; tune application thread pools. | | Long term | Implement horizontal scaling (HPA/KEDA, VMReplicaSet); review | | | placement rules. |

If you cannot resolve the issue, see the following resources:

• OKD Help
• #virtualization Slack channel

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