Scalability Foundations

Before I dive into how autoscaling works in Kubernetes, let me first talk about what scaling means in the context of computing systems.Scaling is the ability of a system to handle increasing amounts of work by adding resources to manage the load efficiently. It's a fundamental concept in computing that has become increasingly crucial in the era of cloud-native applications and microservices architectures. The true power of scaling lies in its automation - the ability to adjust resources dynamically without human intervention, which is essential for managing the rapid and unpredictable demand. The following diagram illustrates the pitfalls of static resource allocation:

As you can see in Figure 1.1, Overprovisioning wastes resources and increases costs, while Underprovisioning risks poor performance and potential system failures. Autoscaling offers a solution to both these problems. Consider...