How do I right-size resources for HPA and VPA?

Right-sizing resources for Horizontal Pod Autoscaler (HPA) and Vertical Pod Autoscaler (VPA) is crucial for optimizing the utilization of resources in your Kubernetes environment. By accurately sizing your pods, you can ensure efficient performance while controlling costs.

Right-Sizing for HPA

The HPA adjusts the number of pods in a deployment based on observed CPU utilization or other select metrics. The following steps can help you right-size resources for HPA:

  1. Monitor CPU & Memory Usage: Use tools like Prometheus to monitor the current resource usage of your application.
  2. Set Target Utilization: Specify a target CPU/memory utilization percentage for the HPA to maintain.
  3. Test Load: Simulate loads to understand how your application scales under varying conditions.
  4. Adjust Limits: Set resource requests and limits appropriately based on your findings.

Right-Sizing for VPA

VPA recommends optimal CPU and memory requests for pods. Follow these practices for right-sizing:

  1. Deploy VPA: Install and enable VPA in your Kubernetes cluster.
  2. Collect Metrics: Ensure that you have proper metrics collected for memory and CPU usage over time.
  3. Analyze Recommendations: VPA provides insights and recommendations based on historical usage.
  4. Adjust Resources: Adjust your configuration based on VPA suggestions to optimize your application’s performance.

Example Configuration

apiVersion: autoscaling/v1 kind: HorizontalPodAutoscaler metadata: name: my-app-hpa spec: scaleTargetRef: apiVersion: apps/v1 kind: Deployment name: my-app minReplicas: 2 maxReplicas: 10 targetCPUUtilizationPercentage: 70

HPA VPA Kubernetes right-sizing resource management