Code Room
On-callMediumoc-g194
Subject Cpu saturationLevel Mid–Senior~35 minCommon in Reliability & on-call interviewsIndustries Software development

Question

A latency-sensitive service on Kubernetes shows periodic p99 latency spikes to 2s every few seconds even though node CPU utilization sits at a comfortable 40% and the app's own CPU usage looks low. The container has a CPU limit of '500m'. The 'container_cpu_cfs_throttled_periods' and 'throttled_seconds' metrics are high and correlate exactly with the latency spikes. The service is multithreaded (a thread pool sized to the node's many cores). No deploy; traffic is normal. Triage and mitigate.

What a strong answer looks like

Stop the bleeding first (mitigate), then form hypotheses from real signals. Separate root cause from symptom, communicate status as you go, and close with what prevents a repeat.

Diagram & narrate the incident
Loading whiteboard…
Run or narrate your approach, then ask the coach.