Why Your Kubernetes Pods Scale Slowly (And How to...

Table Of Contents The Problem Why Autoscaling Feels Slow The Fix: Placeholder Pods How to Set It Up What Happens During a Real Spike Things to Keep in Mind Wrapping Up The Problem You've set up the Horizontal Pod Autoscaler (HPA) in your cluster. Your app gets a sudden spike in traffic, and your existing pods start to throttle under the heavy load. The HPA kicks in: "Hey, I need 3 more pods to service this traffic!" But instead of scaling instantly, those pods sit in a Pending state for 4–5 minu