Google PCA Practice Question: Managing and Provisioning a Solution Infrastructure
A GKE cluster has a Horizontal Pod Autoscaler (HPA) configured for CPU utilization. The pods are not scaling up even though CPU usage is high. What could be the reason?
Answer choices
Why each option matters
Answer the question above first, then reveal the full breakdown to understand why each option is right or wrong.
Correct answer & explanation
✓
The pods do not have resource requests defined
The HPA may not have permissions to read metrics or the metrics server might be unavailable. Also, the target CPU utilization might be set incorrectly. Another common issue is that the HPA is using the wrong metric or the pod resource requests are not set.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
The cluster autoscaler is disabled
Why it's wrong here
Cluster autoscaler adds nodes, not pods. HPA scales pods independently.
- ✗
The HPA is configured with the wrong metric name
Why it's wrong here
CPU is a standard metric; misconfiguring metric name is unlikely.
- ✗
The node pool is out of capacity
Why it's wrong here
HPA can still scale pods, but they may remain pending if no nodes. However, HPA itself would still work.
- ✓
The pods do not have resource requests defined
Why this is correct
HPA requires CPU resource requests on pods to calculate utilization.
Go deeper
Related to this question
Learn chapter
Google Cloud Resource Hierarchy and Organization
Key term
Pod
A pod is the smallest deployable unit in Kubernetes, containing one or more containers that share storage, network, and a specification for how to run.
Key term
Autoscaler
An Autoscaler is a cloud service that automatically increases or decreases the number of virtual machines (instances) or resources based on real-time demand, so your application always has enough capacity without wasting money on idle servers.
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Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
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