Unstable Scaling During Traffic Spikes

Pod scaling became unstable during traffic spikes due to delayed scaling responses.

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What Happened

During high-traffic periods, HPA (Horizontal Pod Autoscaler) did not scale pods fast enough, leading to slow response times.

Diagnosis Steps

1Reviewed HPA logs and metrics and discovered scaling triggers were based on 5-minute intervals, which caused delayed reactions to rapid traffic increases.
2Observed increased latency and 504 Gateway Timeout errors.

Root Cause

Autoscaler was not responsive enough to quickly scale up based on rapidly changing traffic.

Fix/Workaround

• Adjusted the scaling policy to use smaller time intervals for triggering scaling.
• Introduced custom metrics to scale pods based on response times and traffic patterns.

Lessons Learned

Autoscaling should be sensitive to real-time traffic patterns and latency.

How to Avoid

1Tune HPA to scale more aggressively during traffic spikes.
2Use more advanced metrics like response time, rather than just CPU and memory, for autoscaling decisions.

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