<p>This is the output of my <code>kubectl describe node &lt;node-name&gt; -o yaml</code> command:</p>

<pre><code>  (Total limits may be over 100 percent, i.e., overcommitted.)
  Resource                   Requests    Limits
  --------                   --------    ------
  cpu                        374m (4%)   3151m (39%)
  memory                     493Mi (1%)  1939Mi (7%)
  ephemeral-storage          0 (0%)      0 (0%)
  attachable-volumes-gce-pd  0           0
</code></pre>

<p>Τhe requests are calculated based on the corresponding pod field? (<code>resources.requests</code>) Or is the node able to report the <strong>actual</strong> resource usage?</p>

<p>If the above is not the actual usage, is there a way to get the corresponding actual metrics?</p>

<p>(I mean via <code>kubectl</code> and not using something like <code>prometheus</code> and <code>node-exporter</code>)</p>

pkaramol
<p>It corresponds to the requests and limits of the containers running on the node.</p>

<p>To get the actual resource usage of each node, you can use:</p>

<pre><code>kubectl top node
</code></pre>

<p>However, this requires you to install the <a href="https://github.com/kubernetes-incubator/metrics-server" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Metrics Server</a> which exposes these metrics through the <a href="https://github.com/kubernetes/community/blob/master/contributors/design-proposals/instrumentation/resource-metrics-api.md" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Resource Metrics API</a>, because <code>kubectl top</code> gets these metrics from the Resource Metrics API.</p>

<p>To install the Metrics Server, simply apply <a href="https://github.com/kubernetes-incubator/metrics-server/tree/master/deploy/1.8%2B" rel="nofollow noreferrer">these YAML files</a>.</p>
