Manual scaling is slowly becoming a thing of the past. Currently, autoscaling is the norm, and organizations that deploy into Kubernetes clusters get built-in autoscaling features like HPA (Horizontal Pod Autoscaling) and VPA (Vertical Pod Autoscaling). But these solutions have limitations. For example, it's difficult for HPA to scale back the number of pods to zero or (de)scale pods based on metrics other than memory or CPU usage. As a result, KEDA (Kubernetes Event-Driven Autoscaling) was introduced to address some of these challenges in autoscaling K8s workloads.
In this blog, we will delve into KEDA and discuss the following points:
What is KEDA?
KEDA architecture and components
KEDA installation and demo
Integrate KEDA in CI/CD pipelines
What Is KEDA?
KEDA is a lightweight, open-source Kubernetes event-driven autoscaler that DevOps, SRE, and Ops teams use to scale pods horizontally based on external events or triggers. KEDA helps to extend the capability of native Kubernetes autoscaling solutions, which rely on standard resource metrics such as CPU or memory. You can deploy KEDA into a Kubernetes cluster and manage the scaling of pods using custom resource definitions (CRDs).