ReplicaSet Misalignment Led to Excessive Scale-Out

A stale ReplicaSet with label mismatches caused duplicate pod scale-out.

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What Happened

Deployment scaled twice the required pod count after an upgrade.

Diagnosis Steps

1kubectl get replicasets showed multiple active sets with overlapping match labels.
2Pod count exceeded expected limits.

Root Cause

A new deployment overlapped labels with an old one ; HPA acted on both.

Fix/Workaround

• Cleaned up old ReplicaSets.
• Scoped matchLabels more tightly.

Lessons Learned

Label discipline is essential for reliable scaling.

How to Avoid