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DevOps & Automation · Intermediate

Cluster Autoscaler

A Kubernetes component that adds nodes when pods cannot be scheduled and removes underutilized nodes.

Definition

It integrates with cloud node groups (EKS, AKS, GKE). Karpenter is an alternative node provisioner, originally from AWS, that selects instance types dynamically.

Example

Pending pods trigger the autoscaler to add a node to the node pool.

Exam tip

Cluster Autoscaler reacts to Pending pods, not CPU utilization.

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