Scaling Overload Due to High Replica Count

Pod scaling led to resource overload on nodes due to an excessively high replica count.

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What Happened

A configuration error caused the Horizontal Pod Autoscaler (HPA) to scale up to an unusually high replica count, leading to CPU and memory overload on the nodes.

Diagnosis Steps

1Checked HPA configuration and found that the scaling target was incorrectly set to a high replica count.
2Monitored node resources, which were exhausted due to the large number of pods.

Root Cause

Misconfigured replica count in the autoscaler configuration.

Fix/Workaround

• Adjusted the replica scaling thresholds in the HPA configuration.
• Limited the maximum replica count to avoid overload.

Lessons Learned

Scaling should always have upper limits to prevent resource exhaustion.

How to Avoid

1Set upper limits for pod replicas and ensure that scaling policies are appropriate for the available resources.

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