Kubernetes Rolling Update not obeying 'maxUnavailable' replicas when redeployed in autoscaled conditions

Question

In a nutshell, most of our apps are configured with the following strategy in the Deployment -

  strategy:
    rollingUpdate:
      maxSurge: 25%
      maxUnavailable: 25%
    type: RollingUpdate

The Horizonatal Pod Autoscaler is configured as so

spec:
  maxReplicas: 10
  minReplicas: 2

Now when our application was redeployed, instead of running a rolling update, it instantly terminated 8 of our pods and dropped the number of pods to 2 which is the min number of replicas available. This happened in a fraction of a second as you can see here.

Here is the output of kubectl get hpa -

As maxUnavailable is 25%, shouldn't only about 2-3 pods go down at max ? Why did so many pods crash at once ? It seems as though rolling update is useless if it works this way.

What am I missing ?

Answer 1

After looking at this question, I decided to try this with test Environment where I wanted to check If it doesn't work.

I have setup the metrics-server to fetch the metrics server and set a HPA. I have followed the following steps to setup the HPA and deployment:

How to Enable KubeAPI server for HPA Autoscaling Metrics

Once, I have working HPA and max 10 pods running on system, I have updated the images using:

[root@ip-10-0-1-176 ~]# kubectl get hpa
NAME         REFERENCE               TARGETS   MINPODS   MAXPODS   REPLICAS   AGE
php-apache   Deployment/php-apache   49%/50%   1         10        10         87m

[root@ip-10-0-1-176 ~]# kubectl get pods
NAME                              READY   STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE
load-generator-557649ddcd-6jlnl   1/1     Running   0          61m
php-apache-75bf8f859d-22xvv       1/1     Running   0          91s
php-apache-75bf8f859d-dv5xg       1/1     Running   0          106s
php-apache-75bf8f859d-g4zgb       1/1     Running   0          106s
php-apache-75bf8f859d-hv2xk       1/1     Running   0          2m16s
php-apache-75bf8f859d-jkctt       1/1     Running   0          2m46s
php-apache-75bf8f859d-nlrzs       1/1     Running   0          2m46s
php-apache-75bf8f859d-ptg5k       1/1     Running   0          106s
php-apache-75bf8f859d-sbctw       1/1     Running   0          91s
php-apache-75bf8f859d-tkjhb       1/1     Running   0          55m
php-apache-75bf8f859d-wv5nc       1/1     Running   0          106s
[root@ip-10-0-1-176 ~]# kubectl set image deployment php-apache php-apache=hpa-example:v1 --record
deployment.extensions/php-apache image updated

[root@ip-10-0-1-176 ~]# kubectl get pods
NAME                              READY   STATUS              RESTARTS   AGE
load-generator-557649ddcd-6jlnl   1/1     Running             0          62m
php-apache-75bf8f859d-dv5xg       1/1     Terminating         0          2m40s
php-apache-75bf8f859d-g4zgb       1/1     Terminating         0          2m40s
php-apache-75bf8f859d-hv2xk       1/1     Terminating         0          3m10s
php-apache-75bf8f859d-jkctt       1/1     Running             0          3m40s
php-apache-75bf8f859d-nlrzs       1/1     Running             0          3m40s
php-apache-75bf8f859d-ptg5k       1/1     Terminating         0          2m40s
php-apache-75bf8f859d-sbctw       0/1     Terminating         0          2m25s
php-apache-75bf8f859d-tkjhb       1/1     Running             0          56m
php-apache-75bf8f859d-wv5nc       1/1     Terminating         0          2m40s
php-apache-847c8ff9f4-7cbds       1/1     Running             0          6s
php-apache-847c8ff9f4-7vh69       1/1     Running             0          6s
php-apache-847c8ff9f4-9hdz4       1/1     Running             0          6s
php-apache-847c8ff9f4-dlltb       0/1     ContainerCreating   0          3s
php-apache-847c8ff9f4-nwcn6       1/1     Running             0          6s
php-apache-847c8ff9f4-p8c54       1/1     Running             0          6s
php-apache-847c8ff9f4-pg8h8       0/1     Pending             0          3s
php-apache-847c8ff9f4-pqzjw       0/1     Pending             0          2s
php-apache-847c8ff9f4-q8j4d       0/1     ContainerCreating   0          4s
php-apache-847c8ff9f4-xpbzl       0/1     Pending             0          1s

Also, I have kept job in background which pushed the kubectl get pods output every second in a file. At no time till all images are upgraded, number of pods never went below 8.

I believe you need to check how you're setting up your rolling upgrade. Are you using deployment or replicaset? I have kept the rolling update strategy same as you maxUnavailable: 25% and maxSurge: 25% with deployment and it is working well for me.