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What’s the difference between horizontal and vertical pod autoscaling?

Asked on Oct 09, 2025

Answer

Horizontal and vertical pod autoscaling are two techniques used in Kubernetes to adjust resource allocation for workloads dynamically. Horizontal Pod Autoscaling (HPA) changes the number of pod replicas based on resource utilization, while Vertical Pod Autoscaling (VPA) adjusts the resource requests and limits for individual pods.

Example Concept: Horizontal Pod Autoscaling (HPA) scales the number of pod replicas in a Kubernetes deployment based on observed CPU utilization or other select metrics. This approach is useful for handling variable workloads by distributing the load across multiple instances. Vertical Pod Autoscaling (VPA), on the other hand, modifies the CPU and memory requests and limits of a pod to better match its actual usage, optimizing resource allocation without changing the number of pods. Both methods aim to improve application performance and resource efficiency, but they address different scaling needs.

Additional Comment:

HPA is commonly used for stateless applications where scaling out is feasible and beneficial.
VPA is more suited for applications with predictable resource usage patterns that benefit from optimized resource allocation.
Both HPA and VPA can be used together, but careful configuration is needed to avoid conflicting resource adjustments.
Ensure that cluster resources are sufficient to accommodate scaling actions initiated by HPA or VPA.

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Didn’t find the answer you were looking for?

What’s the difference between horizontal and vertical pod autoscaling?

Asked on Oct 09, 2025

Answer

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