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Scenario #426
Scaling & Load
Kubernetes v1.22, GCP
Downscale Too Aggressive During Traffic Dips
Autoscaler scaled down too aggressively during short traffic dips, causing pod churn.
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What Happened
Traffic decreased briefly, triggering a scale-in, only for the traffic to spike again.
Diagnosis Steps
- 1HPA scaled down to 0 replicas during a brief traffic lull.
- 2Pod churn noticed after every scale-in event.
Root Cause
Aggressive scaling behavior set too low a minReplicas threshold.
Fix/Workaround
• Set a minimum of 1 replica for critical workloads.
• Tuned scaling thresholds to avoid premature downscaling.Lessons Learned
Aggressive scaling policies can cause instability in unpredictable workloads.
How to Avoid
- 1Use minReplicas for essential workloads.
- 2Implement stabilization windows for both scale-up and scale-down.