Rancher: High CPU utilization even with zero clusters under management
I am seeing a continuous 8 to 15% CPU usage on Rancher related processes while there is not a single cluster being managed by it. Nor is any user interacting with. What explains this high CPU usage when idle? Also, there are several "rancher-agent" containers perpetually running and restarting. Which does not look right. There is no Kubernetes cluster running on this machine. This machine (unless Rancher is creating its own single node cluster for whatever reason).
I am using Rancher 2.3
docker stats: 
docker ps: 
htop: 
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2 Answers
- Rancher (2.3.x) does not do anything involving k3s. These pictures are not "just Rancher".
- k3s is separately installed and running.
- The agents further suggest that this node is added to a cluster (maybe the same Rancher running on it, maybe not).
- It restarting all the time is not helping CPU usage, especially if it is registered to that local Rancher instance.
- Also you're running a completely random commit from head instead of an actual release.
I'm not sure I would call 15% "high", but Kubernetes has a lot of ongoing stuff even if it looks like the cluster is entirely quiet. Stuff like processing node heartbeats, etcd election traffic, controllers with time-based conditions which have to be processed. K3s probably streamlines that a bit, but 0% CPU usage is not a design goal even in the fork.