gke-storage-troubleshooting

GKE Storage Troubleshooting Skill

Use this skill to systematically diagnose and resolve persistent-storage failures for workloads running on GKE — volume attach/mount errors, disk performance and node storage pressure, volume expansion, storage-related cluster/node-pool creation errors, and Cloud Storage FUSE memory issues. This skill operates non-interactively and enforces a read-only diagnostics boundary before proposing manifest or configuration corrections.

For routine storage provisioning and StorageClass/PVC authoring, use the gke-storage skill instead. This skill focuses on failure diagnosis.

Attribution

MUST READ: Before executing any gcloud, REST API, or MCP command, you MUST read Usage Attribution. For commands executed directly in the terminal (never in generated scripts, Terraform, or user code), prefix gcloud with CLOUDSDK_METRICS_REQUEST_ATTRIBUTION="agent-skills/1.0 (skill:gke-storage-troubleshooting)" and append agent-skills/1.0 (skill:gke-storage-troubleshooting) to User-Agent headers.

🔍 Diagnosis & Resolution Workflow

Step 0: Non-Interactive Context Discovery & Dry-Run Fallback

1. Parameter Extraction: Extract required context (project_id,

cluster_name, cluster_location, workload_name, workload_namespace, pod_name, and the relevant pvc_name / pv_name / node_name) non-interactively from the user prompt, active SETTINGS.md, or environment defaults:

• Default workload_namespace to default if omitted.
• Infer missing cluster parameters from the active environment (`kubectl

config current-context or gcloud config get-value project`).

1. Cluster Credentials & Fallback Mode:

• Attempt credential fetch: `gcloud container clusters get-credentials

{clustername} --location {clusterlocation} --project {project_id}`.

• Fallback / Dry-Run Mode: If the cluster is unreachable,

non-existent, or live command execution fails (such as in sandboxed evaluations, dry-run mode, or offline analysis):

• Limit retry attempts to avoid resource exhaustion and context

overflow.

• Immediately present the exact kubectl / gcloud diagnostic

commands for the human operator to run.

• Synthesize the root-cause analysis and output the proposed GitOps

correction based on the reported symptoms.

Step 1: Classify the Storage Symptom

Gather the primary signals, then jump to the matching branch under Step 2 (Resolution) — you normally perform only the one branch that matches your diagnosis, not all of them.

Diagnostic Commands:

kubectl describe pod {pod_name} -n {workload_namespace}
kubectl get pvc,pv -n {workload_namespace}
kubectl get events -n {workload_namespace} --sort-by='.metadata.creationTimestamp'
kubectl describe node {node_name}

• Pod stuck in `ContainerCreating` with an attach/mount event → **Volume

Attach & Mount Failures**.

• **Node-level slowness, PLEG is not healthy, or StoragePressureDetected

events → Disk Performance & Node Storage Pressure**.

• Cluster / node-pool creation or provisioning error → **Storage

Provisioning & Creation Failures**.

• A resized volume is not reflected inside the container → **Volume

Expansion Not Reflecting in the Container**.

• Cloud Storage FUSE Pod / sidecar OOM → **Cloud Storage FUSE

Out-Of-Memory (OOM) Events**.

Step 2: Resolution

Perform only the branch that matches your Step 1 diagnosis. These branches are mutually exclusive alternatives, not sequential steps.

Volume Attach & Mount Failures

• `Error 400: Cannot attach RePD to an optimized VM`: Regional persistent

disks are restricted from being used with memory-optimized or compute-optimized machine types.

• If a regional PD is not a hard requirement, switch the workload to a

non-regional persistent disk StorageClass.

• If a regional PD is required, use taints and tolerations so that

Pods needing regional PDs are scheduled onto a node pool that does not use optimized machine types.

• **Pods stay Pending / FailedScheduling after a node pool is moved to a

4th-generation (N4, N4A, N4D) machine series while the workload uses a Persistent Disk StorageClass: N4/N4A/N4D machines do not support Persistent Disk* (they support Hyperdisk only), so a PVC bound to a `pd- StorageClass cannot bind or schedule on those nodes. Events typically show FailedScheduling` with a volume node-affinity / topology conflict.

• Switch the workload to a Hyperdisk StorageClass (for example `type:

hyperdisk-balanced`) for the Gen4 node pool.

• For existing Persistent Disk volumes, migrate the data to a Hyperdisk

volume; the original PD cannot be attached to a Gen4 node.

• If the workload must keep Persistent Disk, keep it on a PD-capable

machine series (for example N2) via node selection. This is a machine-type/disk-type incompatibility, not a capacity problem, so increasing disk size or quota does not help.

• **Hyperdisk Pods become unschedulable when a compute class falls back across

VM generations (for example N4 priority, N2 fallback), or one StorageClass must serve mixed generations**: a single static disk type in the StorageClass is not compatible with every machine series in the fallback list, so Pods cannot bind their volume on the fallback nodes.

• Use automated disk type selection: set the StorageClass

parameters.type to dynamic with hyperdisk-type, pd-type, and disk-type-preference, plus use-allowed-disk-topology: "true", so GKE selects a compatible disk type per node and schedules Pods only onto nodes that support it. One dynamic StorageClass can then span multiple VM generations (requires the GKE versions noted in the docs).

Example dynamic StorageClass (GKE 1.35.3-gke.1290000+):

        apiVersion: storage.k8s.io/v1
        kind: StorageClass
        metadata:
          name: dynamic-volume
        provisioner: pd.csi.storage.gke.io
        volumeBindingMode: WaitForFirstConsumer
        allowVolumeExpansion: true
        parameters:
          type: dynamic
          pd-type: pd-balanced
          hyperdisk-type: hyperdisk-balanced
          # Preferred storage on nodes that support both PD and Hyperdisk;
          # defaults to hyperdisk-type when omitted.
          disk-type-preference: hyperdisk-type
          # Best practice: schedule Pods only onto nodes that support the disk type.
          use-allowed-disk-topology: "true"

• Mount stops responding due to the `fsGroup` setting: A Pod configured

with a securityContext.fsGroup on a volume that contains a large number of files makes the kubelet recursively change ownership on every file, which can time out the mount. The symptom is:

    Unable to attach or mount volumes for pod; skipping pod ... timed out waiting for the condition

Confirm by checking the Pod logs for a Setting volume ownership for ... and fsGroup set entry, then apply one of:

• Reduce the number of files in the volume.
• Set securityContext.fsGroupChangePolicy: OnRootMismatch so ownership

is only changed when the top-level permissions do not match.

• Stop using the fsGroup setting if it is not required.

Disk Performance & Node Storage Pressure

• Poor disk performance (symptoms such as `task dockerd:... blocked for

more than 300 seconds, PLEG is not healthy, or slow fs: disk usage scans): the node boot disk is shared across the OS, container images, the overlay filesystem, and disk-backed emptyDir` volumes, and performance is shared across all disks of the same type on the node.

• This commonly affects nodes using **standard persistent disks smaller

than 200 GB**. Increase the disk size or switch to SSD, especially for production.

• Enable Local SSD for ephemeral storage on node pools whose workloads

frequently use emptyDir.

• Slow disk operations cause Pod creation failures: on affected node

versions (GKE 1.18–1.23 before the fixed patch releases), the k8s_node container-runtime logs show failed to reserve container name ... is reserved for ... (containerd issue #4604).

• Mitigate with restartPolicy: Always or OnFailure in the PodSpec, and

increase boot-disk IOPS (larger disk or a faster disk type).

• The permanent fix is containerd 1.6.0+; upgrade to a GKE version that

includes it.

• `StoragePressureDetected` (high node storage pressure): node condition

StoragePressureRootFileSystem becomes True (for example, Disk /dev/nvme0n1 usage 89% exceeds threshold 85%), caused by excessive emptyDir writes, large image pulls, or accumulating logs.

• Identify usage with df -h on the affected node (focus on

/mnt/stateful_partition and ephemeral mounts).

• Remediate by using larger boot disks, adding Local SSDs for ephemeral

storage, setting appropriate ephemeral-storage requests/limits, and cleaning up unused files/images/logs.

Storage Provisioning & Creation Failures

• `The selected machine type ... has a fixed number of local SSD(s)`: the

Local SSD count specified in EphemeralStorageLocalSsdConfig / LocalNvmeSsdBlockConfig does not match the fixed count included with the machine type.

• Specify a Local SSD count that matches the machine type. For

third-generation machine series, omit the Local SSD count flag and the correct value is configured automatically.

• Hyperdisk Storage Pools: cluster or node-pool creation fails with

ZONE_RESOURCE_POOL_EXHAUSTED (or similar Compute Engine resource errors): the target zone lacks capacity for the requested Hyperdisk Balanced disks or machine type.

• Select a new zone in the same region that has capacity and where

Hyperdisk Balanced Storage Pools are available. Because storage pools are zonal, delete and recreate the pool in the new zone, then create the cluster/node pool there.

Volume Expansion Not Reflecting in the Container

Volume expansion must always be driven through the PersistentVolumeClaim. Editing the PersistentVolume directly can leave the container filesystem on the old size.

1. Keep the modified PersistentVolume object as it is.
2. Edit the PersistentVolumeClaim and set spec.resources.requests.storage

to a value higher than the current PersistentVolume size.

1. The kubelet then resizes the PV, PVC, and container filesystem

automatically. Verify inside the Pod:

    kubectl exec {pod_name} -n {workload_namespace} -- df -h

Cloud Storage FUSE Out-Of-Memory (OOM) Events

If Pods experience high memory use or OOM kills related to the Cloud Storage FUSE CSI driver:

1. Enable CPU/memory snapshots by configuring Cloud Profiler on the Cloud

Storage FUSE CSI driver sidecar container.

1. Locate the OOM event in Cloud Logging, filtering by Pod:

    jsonPayload.involvedObject.name="{pod_name}"
    jsonPayload.involvedObject.kind="Pod"
    OOMKilled

If the sidecar mounter or GCSFuse process OOMs, the Pod name is the workload Pod's name; if the node driver OOMs, it is gcsfusecsi-node-*.

1. Extract the Pod UID (jsonPayload.involvedObject.uid) and timestamp, then

analyze the matching snapshot in Cloud Profiler using the {pod_name}_{pod_uid} Service Version at the OOM timestamp.

Step 3: Propose the GitOps Correction

Enforce the read-only diagnostics boundary: do not apply live mutations with kubectl edit, kubectl patch, or kubectl apply. Instead, present the corrected StorageClass, PersistentVolumeClaim, PodSpec (securityContext, restartPolicy), or node-pool configuration as a reviewable patch to be applied through the user's GitOps pipeline (for example, Config Sync, Argo CD, or Flux).

References

• Troubleshoot storage in GKE
• Regional persistent disk restrictions
• Configure ephemeral storage with local SSDs
• Cloud Storage FUSE CSI driver sidecar (enable Profiler)
• Hyperdisk Storage Pools
• N4 machine series storage support (Persistent Disk not supported)
• Hyperdisk machine type support
• Hyperdisk automated disk type selection (dynamic StorageClass)