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Scenario #418
Scaling & Load
Kubernetes v1.24, self-hosted
Spike in Load Exceeded Pod Init Time
Sudden burst of traffic overwhelmed services due to slow pod boot time.
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What Happened
HPA triggered scale-out, but pods took too long to start. Users got errors.
Diagnosis Steps
- 1Noticed gap between scale-out and readiness.
- 2Startup probes took 30s+ per pod.
Root Cause
App container had heavy init routines.
Fix/Workaround
• Optimized Docker image layers and moved setup to init containers.Lessons Learned
Scale-out isn’t instant ; pod readiness matters.
How to Avoid
- 1Track ReadySeconds vs ReplicaScale delay.
- 2Pre-pull images and optimize pod init time.