A team wants Kubernetes to recommend or apply right-sized CPU and memory values for each container based on observed consumption, instead of changing the number of replicas. Which component fits this need?
Show answer and explanation
Answer: B
The Vertical Pod Autoscaler analyzes the historical and current resource usage of containers and recommends or applies adjusted CPU and memory requests and limits. It has modes such as Off, which only produces recommendations, and Auto, which can evict and recreate pods to apply new values. Because it changes the size of each pod rather than the count, it complements horizontal scaling. It is the right tool when the problem is per-container sizing.
Why the other options are wrong
- A. The Horizontal Pod Autoscaler changes the number of replicas. It does not resize the resources of an individual container.
- C. The Cluster Autoscaler adjusts the number of nodes in a pool. It does not change the CPU or memory values set on containers.
- D. Node auto-provisioning creates node pools to fit pending workloads. It does not tune the requests of existing containers.