Inconsistent Load Balancing During Pod Scaling Events

Load balancer failed to redistribute traffic effectively when scaling pods, causing uneven distribution and degraded service.

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What Happened

After scaling up the pods, the load balancer failed to reconfigure itself to distribute traffic evenly across all pods, leading to some pods being overloaded.

Diagnosis Steps

1Reviewed the load balancer configuration and discovered it had a fixed backend list, which did not update after pod scaling.
2Observed uneven traffic distribution through the service endpoints.

Root Cause

Static load balancer configuration, which did not dynamically update with the changes in pod scaling.

Fix/Workaround

• Updated load balancer settings to support dynamic backend updates.
• Configured the service to automatically update the backend pool as pods were scaled up or down.

Lessons Learned

Load balancer configurations should be dynamic to accommodate changes in pod count during scaling.

How to Avoid

1Use dynamic load balancing configurations that automatically update with pod scaling.
2Regularly test load balancer configurations during scaling operations.

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