Introduction to Kubernetes Scaling
Scaling Kubernetes deployments is a critical aspect of maintaining application performance and availability. This post will walk you through the different strategies and techniques you can use to scale your cluster effectively.
Understanding the different scaling approaches – horizontal, vertical, and auto-scaling – is crucial. We'll cover each of these in detail.
Horizontal Scaling (Scaling Out)
Horizontal scaling involves adding more instances of your application. This is generally preferred in Kubernetes because it allows you to scale out to handle increased load without significant changes to your application code.
We'll look at how to use Deployments and ReplicaSets to manage your application instances.
Vertical Scaling (Scaling Up)
Vertical scaling involves increasing the resources (CPU, memory) allocated to a single instance. While possible, this approach is often less flexible than horizontal scaling.
Auto-Scaling
Auto-scaling automatically adjusts the number of instances based on metrics like CPU utilization or request latency. This is often implemented using Horizontal Pod Autoscalers (HPA).
Learn more about Kubernetes Deployments | Learn more about Kubernetes ReplicaSets