Check Ceph Health

Use this guide to diagnose and remediate Ceph storage issues on OpenShift clusters running OCS/ODF (OpenShift Data Foundation).

1. Ceph Cluster Health

# Quick health status
kubectl -n openshift-storage get cephcluster -o jsonpath='{.items[*].status.ceph.health}'

# Detailed health with error messages
kubectl -n openshift-storage get cephcluster -o jsonpath='{.items[*].status.ceph.details}' | python3 -m json.tool

# Capacity overview (bytesAvailable, bytesUsed, bytesTotal)
kubectl -n openshift-storage get cephcluster -o jsonpath='{.items[*].status.ceph.capacity}' | python3 -m json.tool

Health states:

• HEALTH_OK

  -- cluster is healthy

• HEALTH_WARN

  -- degraded but functional (backfillfull, nearfull, degraded PGs)

• HEALTH_ERR

  -- critical, writes may be blocked (full OSDs, too few OSDs, down PGs)

2. Running Ceph Commands

OCS/ODF clusters may not have a rook-ceph-tools pod deployed. Use a mon pod to run ceph commands directly.

# Find the mon pod and its service address
MON_POD=$(kubectl -n openshift-storage get pods -l app=rook-ceph-mon -o jsonpath='{.items[0].metadata.name}')
MON_ADDR=$(kubectl -n openshift-storage get pod $MON_POD -o jsonpath='{.spec.containers[0].env[?(@.name=="ROOK_CEPH_MON_HOST")].value}' | sed 's/\[//;s/\]//')

# Run any ceph command via the mon pod
kubectl -n openshift-storage exec $MON_POD -c mon -- \
  ceph -m $MON_ADDR --keyring /etc/ceph/keyring-store/keyring status

Useful ceph commands to run this way:

• status

  -- overall cluster status

• osd df

  -- per-OSD disk usage

• osd pool ls detail

  -- pool details

• df

  -- pool-level capacity

• health detail

  -- verbose health messages

3. OSD Status

# OSD pods
kubectl -n openshift-storage get pods -l app=rook-ceph-osd

# OSD prepare jobs (should be Completed, not stuck)
kubectl -n openshift-storage get pods | grep osd-prepare

# Storage device sets (backing PVCs for OSDs)
kubectl -n openshift-storage get pvc -l app=rook-ceph-osd

4. CSI Provisioner Pods

PVC provisioning is handled by CSI driver pods. If these are unhealthy, no volumes can be created.

# RBD CSI controller (provisions rbd volumes)
kubectl -n openshift-storage get pods | grep rbd.*ctrlplugin

# CephFS CSI controller (provisions cephfs volumes)
kubectl -n openshift-storage get pods | grep cephfs.*ctrlplugin

# RBD node plugins (mount volumes on nodes)
kubectl -n openshift-storage get pods | grep rbd.*nodeplugin

# Check for CSI provisioner errors in logs
kubectl -n openshift-storage logs <rbd-ctrlplugin-pod> -c csi-rbdplugin --tail=50

5. PVC and PV Diagnosis

# Find stuck PVCs
kubectl get pvc --all-namespaces --field-selector status.phase=Pending

# Describe a pending PVC to see provisioning errors
kubectl describe pvc <pvc-name> -n <namespace>

# Find Released PVs (consume space but no longer bound to a PVC)
kubectl get pv --field-selector status.phase=Released

# Check StorageClasses
kubectl get storageclass

6. Common Problems and Remediation

OSDs Full (HEALTH_ERR: full osd(s))

Symptoms: PVCs stuck in Pending, provisioning errors with

DeadlineExceeded

or

operation already exists

.

Diagnosis:

kubectl -n openshift-storage get cephcluster -o jsonpath='{.items[*].status.ceph.details}' | python3 -m json.tool

Look for

OSD_FULL

and

POOL_FULL

messages.

Remediation:

1. Delete Released PVs to reclaim space from orphaned volumes:

   kubectl get pv --field-selector status.phase=Released
   kubectl delete pv <released-pv-names>
   

2. Temporarily raise the full ratio if Ceph is blocking all writes (including deletes):

   # Raise to 0.92 to unblock writes temporarily
   kubectl -n openshift-storage exec $MON_POD -c mon -- \
     ceph -m $MON_ADDR --keyring /etc/ceph/keyring-store/keyring \
     osd set-full-ratio 0.92
   

   Once space is freed and health improves, reset to default:

   kubectl -n openshift-storage exec $MON_POD -c mon -- \
     ceph -m $MON_ADDR --keyring /etc/ceph/keyring-store/keyring \
     osd set-full-ratio 0.85
   

3. Add more storage by expanding OSD count or disk size if cleanup is insufficient.

OSDs Nearfull / Backfillfull (HEALTH_WARN)

Symptoms: Cluster functional but approaching full. Warnings about

nearfull

or

backfillfull

OSDs.

Remediation:

• Clean up unused PVCs and Released PVs
• Delete completed migration data no longer needed
• Plan capacity expansion before reaching full threshold (85%)

Degraded PGs

Symptoms:

HEALTH_WARN

with messages about degraded or undersized placement groups.

Diagnosis:

# Via mon pod:
ceph health detail
ceph pg stat

Remediation:

• If an OSD is down, check the OSD pod and its node
• If a node is down, Ceph will self-heal once the node returns
• If an OSD is permanently lost, Ceph will rebalance automatically (may take time)

CSI Provisioner Not Responding

Symptoms: PVC events say "waiting for external provisioner" but no

ProvisioningFailed

errors.

Diagnosis:

kubectl -n openshift-storage get pods | grep ctrlplugin
kubectl -n openshift-storage logs <rbd-ctrlplugin-pod> -c csi-rbdplugin --tail=100

Remediation:

• Restart the CSI controller pod if it's stuck
• Check if the Ceph cluster is reachable from the CSI pod
• Verify the StorageClass references a valid pool and secret

Pools Full but OSDs Not Full

Symptoms:

POOL_FULL

warning but individual OSDs have space.

Diagnosis:

# Via mon pod:
ceph osd pool ls detail
ceph df detail

Remediation:

• A pool may have a quota set -- check and raise it
• Rebalance may be needed if data is unevenly distributed

7. Operator Health

# OCS/ODF operator pods
kubectl -n openshift-storage get pods | grep -E 'ocs-operator|odf-operator|rook-ceph-operator'

# Rook operator logs (manages Ceph cluster lifecycle)
kubectl -n openshift-storage logs deployment/rook-ceph-operator --tail=50

# Check for CrashLoopBackOff or restarts
kubectl -n openshift-storage get pods -o custom-columns=\
'NAME:.metadata.name,STATUS:.status.phase,RESTARTS:.status.containerStatuses[0].restartCount' \
  | sort -t' ' -k3 -rn | head -10

8. Preventive Checks

Run these periodically to avoid surprise outages:

# Capacity usage percentage
kubectl -n openshift-storage get cephcluster -o jsonpath='{.items[*].status.ceph.capacity}' | \
  python3 -c "import json,sys; d=json.load(sys.stdin); pct=d['bytesUsed']/d['bytesTotal']*100; print(f'Used: {pct:.1f}%  ({d[\"bytesUsed\"]//2**30} GiB / {d[\"bytesTotal\"]//2**30} GiB)')"

# Released PVs consuming space
kubectl get pv --field-selector status.phase=Released --no-headers | wc -l

# PVCs stuck in Pending
kubectl get pvc --all-namespaces --field-selector status.phase=Pending --no-headers | wc -l

Act when usage exceeds 70% -- start cleaning up or expanding capacity before hitting the 85% full threshold.