Scaling and HPA

Part of the Kubernetes course

Picture a supermarket with ten checkout lanes but only two cashiers on duty. At nine in the morning that is plenty. At six in the evening the queue reaches the back of the store, and the manager has to walk over and open four more lanes by hand. Every evening. Forever.

That is what running a fixed number of copies of your application feels like. You picked a number once, and reality keeps disagreeing with it. Sometimes you can predict the disagreement ("marketing is running a campaign on Friday") and sometimes you cannot. ...