Scale a Cluster with CA

Deploy a Sample App

We will deploy an sample nginx application as a ReplicaSet of 1 Pod

cat <<EoF> ~/environment/cluster-autoscaler/nginx.yaml
apiVersion: apps/v1
kind: Deployment
metadata:
  name: nginx-to-scaleout
spec:
  replicas: 1
  selector:
    matchLabels:
      app: nginx
  template:
    metadata:
      labels:
        service: nginx
        app: nginx
    spec:
      containers:
      - image: nginx
        name: nginx-to-scaleout
        resources:
          limits:
            cpu: 500m
            memory: 512Mi
          requests:
            cpu: 500m
            memory: 512Mi
EoF
kubectl apply -f ~/environment/cluster-autoscaler/nginx.yaml
kubectl get deployment/nginx-to-scaleout

Scale our ReplicaSet

OK, let’s scale out the replicaset to 10

kubectl scale --replicas=10 deployment/nginx-to-scaleout

Some pods will be in the Pending state, which triggers the cluster-autoscaler to scale out the EC2 fleet.

kubectl get pods -o wide --watch


NAME                                 READY     STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE

nginx-to-scaleout-7cb554c7d5-2d4gp   0/1       Pending   0          11s
nginx-to-scaleout-7cb554c7d5-2nh69   0/1       Pending   0          12s
nginx-to-scaleout-7cb554c7d5-45mqz   0/1       Pending   0          12s
nginx-to-scaleout-7cb554c7d5-4qvzl   0/1       Pending   0          12s
nginx-to-scaleout-7cb554c7d5-5jddd   1/1       Running   0          34s
nginx-to-scaleout-7cb554c7d5-5sx4h   0/1       Pending   0          12s
nginx-to-scaleout-7cb554c7d5-5xbjp   0/1       Pending   0          11s
nginx-to-scaleout-7cb554c7d5-6l84p   0/1       Pending   0          11s
nginx-to-scaleout-7cb554c7d5-7vp7l   0/1       Pending   0          12s
nginx-to-scaleout-7cb554c7d5-86pr6   0/1       Pending   0          12s
nginx-to-scaleout-7cb554c7d5-88ttw   0/1       Pending   0          12s

View the cluster-autoscaler logs

kubectl logs -f deployment/cluster-autoscaler -n kube-system

You will notice Cluster Autoscaler events similar to below CA Scale Up events

Check the AWS Management Console to confirm that the Auto Scaling groups are scaling up to meet demand. This may take a few minutes. You can also follow along with the pod deployment from the command line. You should see the pods transition from pending to running as nodes are scaled up.

Scale Up