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Autoscale the DNS Service in a Cluster

This page shows how to enable and configure autoscaling of the DNS service in a Kubernetes cluster.

Before you begin

You need to have a Kubernetes cluster, and the kubectl command-line tool must be configured to communicate with your cluster. If you do not already have a cluster, you can create one by using Minikube, or you can use one of these Kubernetes playgrounds:

To check the version, enter kubectl version.

Determining whether DNS horizontal autoscaling is already enabled

List the Deployments in your cluster in the kube-system namespace:

kubectl get deployment --namespace=kube-system

The output is similar to this:

NAME                  DESIRED   CURRENT   UP-TO-DATE   AVAILABLE   AGE
...
kube-dns-autoscaler   1         1         1            1           ...
...

If you see “kube-dns-autoscaler” in the output, DNS horizontal autoscaling is already enabled, and you can skip to Tuning autoscaling parameters.

Getting the name of your DNS Deployment or ReplicationController

List the Deployments in your cluster in the kube-system namespace:

kubectl get deployment --namespace=kube-system

The output is similar to this:

NAME         DESIRED   CURRENT   UP-TO-DATE   AVAILABLE   AGE
...
kube-dns     1         1         1            1           ...
...

In Kubernetes versions earlier than 1.5 DNS is implemented using a ReplicationController instead of a Deployment. So if you don’t see kube-dns, or a similar name, in the preceding output, list the ReplicationControllers in your cluster in the kube-system namespace:

kubectl get rc --namespace=kube-system

The output is similar to this:

NAME            DESIRED   CURRENT   READY     AGE
...
kube-dns-v20    1         1         1         ...
...

Determining your scale target

If you have a DNS Deployment, your scale target is:

Deployment/<your-deployment-name>

where is the name of your DNS Deployment. For example, if your DNS Deployment name is kube-dns, your scale target is Deployment/kube-dns.

If you have a DNS ReplicationController, your scale target is:

ReplicationController/<your-rc-name>

where is the name of your DNS ReplicationController. For example, if your DNS ReplicationController name is kube-dns-v20, your scale target is ReplicationController/kube-dns-v20.

Enabling DNS horizontal autoscaling

In this section, you create a Deployment. The Pods in the Deployment run a container based on the cluster-proportional-autoscaler-amd64 image.

Create a file named dns-horizontal-autoscaler.yaml with this content:

dns-horizontal-autoscaler.yaml docs/tasks/administer-cluster 
apiVersion: apps/v1
kind: Deployment
metadata:
  name: kube-dns-autoscaler
  namespace: kube-system
  labels:
    k8s-app: kube-dns-autoscaler
spec:
  selector:
    matchLabels:
       k8s-app: kube-dns-autoscaler
  template:
    metadata:
      labels:
        k8s-app: kube-dns-autoscaler
    spec:
      containers:
      - name: autoscaler
        image: k8s.gcr.io/cluster-proportional-autoscaler-amd64:1.1.1
        resources:
            requests:
                cpu: "20m"
                memory: "10Mi"
        command:
          - /cluster-proportional-autoscaler
          - --namespace=kube-system
          - --configmap=kube-dns-autoscaler
          - --target=<SCALE_TARGET>
          # When cluster is using large nodes(with more cores), "coresPerReplica" should dominate.
          # If using small nodes, "nodesPerReplica" should dominate.
          - --default-params={"linear":{"coresPerReplica":256,"nodesPerReplica":16,"min":1}}
          - --logtostderr=true
          - --v=2

In the file, replace <SCALE_TARGET> with your scale target.

Go to the directory that contains your configuration file, and enter this command to create the Deployment:

kubectl create -f dns-horizontal-autoscaler.yaml

The output of a successful command is:

deployment "kube-dns-autoscaler" created

DNS horizontal autoscaling is now enabled.

Tuning autoscaling parameters

Verify that the kube-dns-autoscaler ConfigMap exists:

kubectl get configmap --namespace=kube-system

The output is similar to this:

NAME                  DATA      AGE
...
kube-dns-autoscaler   1         ...
...

Modify the data in the ConfigMap:

kubectl edit configmap kube-dns-autoscaler --namespace=kube-system

Look for this line:

linear: '{"coresPerReplica":256,"min":1,"nodesPerReplica":16}'

Modify the fields according to your needs. The “min” field indicates the minimal number of DNS backends. The actual number of backends number is calculated using this equation:

replicas = max( ceil( cores * 1/coresPerReplica ) , ceil( nodes * 1/nodesPerReplica ) )

Note that the values of both coresPerReplica and nodesPerReplica are integers.

The idea is that when a cluster is using nodes that have many cores, coresPerReplica dominates. When a cluster is using nodes that have fewer cores, nodesPerReplica dominates.

There are other supported scaling patterns. For details, see cluster-proportional-autoscaler.

Disable DNS horizontal autoscaling

There are a few options for turning DNS horizontal autoscaling. Which option to use depends on different conditions.

Option 1: Scale down the kube-dns-autoscaler deployment to 0 replicas

This option works for all situations. Enter this command:

kubectl scale deployment --replicas=0 kube-dns-autoscaler --namespace=kube-system

The output is:

deployment "kube-dns-autoscaler" scaled

Verify that the replica count is zero:

kubectl get deployment --namespace=kube-system

The output displays 0 in the DESIRED and CURRENT columns:

NAME                  DESIRED   CURRENT   UP-TO-DATE   AVAILABLE   AGE
...
kube-dns-autoscaler   0         0         0            0           ...
...

Option 2: Delete the kube-dns-autoscaler deployment

This option works if kube-dns-autoscaler is under your own control, which means no one will re-create it:

kubectl delete deployment kube-dns-autoscaler --namespace=kube-system

The output is:

deployment "kube-dns-autoscaler" deleted

Option 3: Delete the kube-dns-autoscaler manifest file from the master node

This option works if kube-dns-autoscaler is under control of the Addon Manager’s control, and you have write access to the master node.

Sign in to the master node and delete the corresponding manifest file. The common path for this kube-dns-autoscaler is:

/etc/kubernetes/addons/dns-horizontal-autoscaler/dns-horizontal-autoscaler.yaml

After the manifest file is deleted, the Addon Manager will delete the kube-dns-autoscaler Deployment.

Understanding how DNS horizontal autoscaling works

Future enhancements

Control patterns, in addition to linear and ladder, that consider custom metrics are under consideration as a future development.

Scaling of DNS backends based on DNS-specific metrics is under consideration as a future development. The current implementation, which uses the number of nodes and cores in cluster, is limited.

Support for custom metrics, similar to that provided by Horizontal Pod Autoscaling, is under consideration as a future development.

What's next

Learn more about the implementation of cluster-proportional-autoscaler.

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