Ask an SRE a deceptively simple question: What is the right size for checkout-api , and how many replicas should it run right now? Their Helm values specify replicas: 3, cpu: 1000m , and memory: 2Gi . But the live cluster tells a different story: HPA has scaled the app to 11 replicas on CPU load; VPA insists it is over-provisioned, recommending cpu: 350m and memory: 3.1Gi ; KEDA demands 24 replicas due to an upstream Kafka lag spike; and Karpenter has provisioned two new nodes, sizing physical capacity strictly against declared requests rather than actual usage. “Five sources yield five...

Source: The New Stack