Descheduler not evicting anything when deployed with Helm chart as a deployment about descheduler

[fbuchmeier-abi]

Hi @sarg3nt ,

could you check if the descheduler works for you when you use the new configuration format v1alpha2? I also had problems getting it to work and it turns out the v0.29.0 already ignores any v1alpha1 config like the one you have in your helm values. See the readme for references: https://github.com/kubernetes-sigs/descheduler?tab=readme-ov-file#policy-default-evictor-and-strategy-plugins

An example that is running fine for me looks like this:

# Recommended to use the latest Policy API version supported by the Descheduler app version
deschedulerPolicyAPIVersion: "descheduler/v1alpha2"

deschedulerPolicy:
  profiles:
    - name: default
      pluginConfig:
        - name: DefaultEvictor
          args:
            ignorePvcPods: true
            evictLocalStoragePods: true
        - name: RemoveDuplicates
        - name: RemovePodsHavingTooManyRestarts
          args:
            podRestartThreshold: 5
            includingInitContainers: true
        - name: LowNodeUtilization
          args:
            thresholds:
              cpu: 30
              memory: 30
              pods: 30
            targetThresholds:
              cpu: 70
              memory: 70
              pods: 70
      plugins:
        balance:
          enabled:
            - RemoveDuplicates
            - LowNodeUtilization
        deschedule:
          enabled:
            - RemovePodsHavingTooManyRestarts

You can also increase the verbosity of the logging output like this (see e.g. https://github.com/kubernetes-sigs/descheduler?tab=readme-ov-file#pod-evictions):

cmdOptions:
  v: 5

However, in case no balancer or evcition is configured this will not change much.

Once your config is correct it should output something along these lines:

descheduler-55b8cb6f58-kpfn4 descheduler I0521 15:33:32.238954       1 defaultevictor.go:202] "Pod fails the following checks" pod="kube-monitoring/prometheus-operator-kube-monitoring-prometheus-node-exportslk6q" checks="pod is a DaemonSet pod"
descheduler-55b8cb6f58-kpfn4 descheduler I0521 15:33:32.239001       1 defaultevictor.go:202] "Pod fails the following checks" pod="kube-system/descheduler-55b8cb6f58-kpfn4" checks="[pod has system critical priority, pod has higher priority than specified priority class threshold]"
descheduler-55b8cb6f58-kpfn4 descheduler I0521 15:33:32.239138       1 profile.go:356] "Total number of pods evicted" extension point="Balance" evictedPods=0

Best regards,
Florian.

[sarg3nt]

Hi @fbuchmeier-abi thanks for pointing that out. I think the "bug" then is that the default values in the 0.29.0 chart are wrong, as that was what I was using.
I saw that 0.30.0 was out so I upgraded to that and used your values and it worked.
I then took a look at the values.yaml for 0.30.0 which is release-1.30 (why???) and tried those and got more errors. Eventually I figured out that two values in the default deschedulerPolicy are not supported.

The commented out lines below are the culprits. nodeAffinityType and includeSoftConstraints

deschedulerPolicy:
  profiles:
    - name: default
      pluginConfig:
        - name: DefaultEvictor
          args:
            ignorePvcPods: true
            evictLocalStoragePods: true
        - name: RemoveDuplicates
        - name: RemovePodsHavingTooManyRestarts
          args:
            podRestartThreshold: 100
            includingInitContainers: true
        - name: RemovePodsViolatingNodeTaints
          # args:
          #   nodeAffinityType:
          #     - requiredDuringSchedulingIgnoredDuringExecution
        - name: RemovePodsViolatingInterPodAntiAffinity
        - name: RemovePodsViolatingTopologySpreadConstraint
          #args:
          #  includeSoftConstraints: false
        - name: LowNodeUtilization
          args:
            thresholds:
              cpu: 20
              memory: 20
              pods: 20
            targetThresholds:
              cpu: 50
              memory: 50
              pods: 50
      plugins:
        balance:
          enabled:
            - RemoveDuplicates
            - RemovePodsViolatingNodeAffinity
            - RemovePodsViolatingTopologySpreadConstraint
            - LowNodeUtilization
        deschedule:
          enabled:
            - RemovePodsHavingTooManyRestarts
            - RemovePodsViolatingNodeTaints
            - RemovePodsViolatingNodeAffinity
            - RemovePodsViolatingInterPodAntiAffinity

So maybe someone should update the vaules.yaml for 1.30
Thank you again. All is working now and I'll close with this comment.