I have seen examples for the horizontal pod autoscaler (HPA) using minikube (example). However, I'm wondering if there is a similar tutorial to get hands on experience with the cluster autoscaler (CA) with minikube. I don't have access to an actual K8 cluster. Although it seems this should be possible, I haven't found any tutorials on the subject. One reason may be that: as I understand it, the CA should increase/decrease the # of nodes to meet requirements, whereas for minikube, the # of nodes needs to be specified upfront since it is run w/ a VM backend. But, I'm hoping I'm wrong on this front and someone can point me to a relevant resource.
Cluster-autoscaler simulator in minikube
kubernetesminikube
Best Answer
Minikube offers one of the easiest zero to dev experiences and a tool that lets you run Kubernetes locally and runs a single-node Kubernetes cluster on your personal computer. Since Minikube runs on a single-node cluster, the cluster autoscaling is not applicable, because the cluster autoscaler will autoscale the cluster itself by adding new nodes to the cluster to handle the increased demand. Although you can start multi-node clusters on minikube and deploy a service to it, it does not support cluster autoscaling because # of nodes are being specified manually.