> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://porter-mintlify-4de6cc10.mintlify.site/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Cluster observability

> Monitor pod status, node resource usage, and cluster-wide infrastructure metrics in real time from the Porter Infrastructure dashboard

Porter provides built-in observability for your cluster infrastructure through the **Infrastructure** dashboard. Access it by clicking **Infrastructure** in the left sidebar.

***

## Pods

The **Pods** tab provides a real-time view of all pods running in your cluster.

* **Search**: Filter pods by name
* **Filters**: Filter by status or namespace

Each pod displays:

| Column        | Description                                           |
| ------------- | ----------------------------------------------------- |
| **Pod name**  | The name of the pod                                   |
| **Namespace** | Kubernetes namespace (e.g., `kube-system`, `default`) |
| **Status**    | Current state (Running, Pending, Failed, etc.)        |
| **Ready**     | Container readiness (e.g., `1/1`)                     |
| **Restarts**  | Number of container restarts                          |
| **CPU**       | CPU usage                                             |
| **Memory**    | Memory usage                                          |
| **Memory %**  | Percentage of memory limit used                       |
| **Age**       | Time since pod creation                               |

***

## Nodes

The **Nodes** tab shows your cluster's node groups and individual nodes.

### Node Groups View

The default view displays all node groups:

| Column            | Description                                                |
| ----------------- | ---------------------------------------------------------- |
| **Node group**    | Name of the node group (e.g., default, monitoring, system) |
| **Instance type** | The machine type for nodes in this group                   |
| **Utilization**   | Visual indicator of resource usage                         |
| **Actions**       | Link to view detailed metrics                              |

### Individual Nodes View

Click on a node group to see individual nodes:

* **Node name**: The cloud provider's node identifier
* **Node group**: Which node group this node belongs to
* **Instance type**: The machine type
* **CPU**: CPU utilization shown as utilized (yellow) vs reserved (blue)
* **Memory**: Memory utilization shown as utilized (yellow) vs reserved (blue)
* **Status**: Node health status (Ready, NotReady)

Click **Metrics >** on any node group to view historical instance counts over time.

***

## Cluster metrics

The **Cluster metrics** view charts the health of Porter's own in-cluster components. Use it when a system application is misbehaving — for example, when Prometheus is OOMing or filling its disk — to compare live usage against the pod's requests and limits over time.

Open the view from the Infrastructure dashboard and pick a system application from the metrics picker.

### Ingress NGINX

Charts the ingress controller that fronts your web services:

* **CPU** and **Memory** usage, with request and limit overlays
* **Request rate**, **latency**, and **status code** breakdowns

Use these charts to correlate an ingress incident (5xx spikes, elevated latency) with resource pressure on the controller pods.

### Prometheus

Charts the in-cluster Prometheus stack that serves the metrics on this page:

* **prometheus-server**: CPU, Memory, and Storage (on-disk TSDB size, blocks plus WAL)
* **kube-state-metrics**: CPU and Memory

CPU and Memory carry request and limit overlays. Storage plots Prometheus's self-reported TSDB size rather than PVC utilization, so there is no capacity ceiling drawn on the chart — watch the trend rather than a fill line.

<Note>
  These charts are served by the Prometheus instance they chart. Gaps during a Prometheus outage are expected and are themselves the signal that the stack is down.
</Note>

***

## Integrating External Monitoring

For application-level monitoring and alerting, integrate with external observability platforms:

<CardGroup cols={3}>
  <Card title="Datadog" icon="dog" href="/addons/third-party-observability">
    Full-stack monitoring with APM, logs, and infrastructure metrics
  </Card>

  <Card title="New Relic" icon="chart-line" href="/addons/third-party-observability">
    Application performance monitoring and alerting
  </Card>

  <Card title="Grafana" icon="chart-area" href="/addons/third-party-observability">
    Dashboards and visualization for metrics and logs
  </Card>
</CardGroup>

See [Third party observability](/addons/third-party-observability) or reach out to support for more information.