Applications Systems

The Kubernetes Container Monitoring is unknown status in SolarWinds Platform

After adding a Kubernetes cluster, the dashboard shows the container service status unknown with 0 containers.

First published date

10/31/2025 2:43 PM

Last published date

10/31/2025 3:25 PM

Overview

After following Kubernetes requirements, deployment command examples, and container removal steps to poll a Kubernetes Container Monitoring, the Kubernetes instance shows a gray icon and 0 containers.

In Container Service Logs, no errors are shown.

Product section

Server Application Monitor

Cause

The logs in the Kubernetes Pod used by the SolarWinds Platform, contains the following Forbidden error:

[ERR] Exception occured while creating the heartbeat. Error message: Operation returned an invalid status code 'Forbidden', response body {"kind":"Status","apiVersion":"v1","metadata":{},"status"
:"Failure","message":"nodes is forbidden: User \"system:serviceaccount:orion:default\" cannot list resource \"nodes\" in API group \"\" at the cluster scope","reason":"Forbidden","details":{"kind":"nodes"},"code":40
3}eu executei os passos seguintescurl -o orion-kubernetes.yaml --insecure --pinnedpubkey sha256//RpZGqw31yKsqr4KIPzevYn6kFlQ2RDEeVWwsDC3jiOY= https://192.168.1.33:38012/orion/container-management/monitoring/deploymentfile?guid=4a849dac-def4-4969-956c-66be1b321ff7sudo

The cause is the user "system:serviceaccount:orion:default" cannot list resource "nodes"

The SW Container deployment uses a "default" account in the deployment yaml file.

Resolution

You can use the Kubernetes command to check which account is being used in the Orion-kubernetes.yaml

kubectl get pod -n orion -o jsonpath="{.items[*].spec.serviceAccountName}"

If the result is "default", then it is wrong, and you must update the Deployment yaml (orion-kubernetes.yaml):
From:
serviceAccountName: default

To:
serviceAccountName: orion-account

The orion-kubernetes.yaml should be:



spec:
  replicas: 1
  selector:
    matchLabels:
      name: orion-cman
  template:
    metadata:
      labels:
        app: orion-cman
        name: orion-cman
    spec:
      serviceAccountName: orion-account  # ✅ This option should be updated
      containers:
        - name: orion-cman
          image: solarwinds/cman:latest
          ...



Then, apply the orion-kubernetes.yaml file in your Kubernetes environment:

kubectl apply -f orion-kubernetes.yaml