An open-data portal team sees CPU-bound app pods and wants the Horizontal Pod Autoscaler to fix capacity. What does HPA actually change?
Select an answer to reveal the explanation.
Short Explanation
Think of HPA like adding more cashiers at a busy counter—not building a bigger store. It scales how many Pod copies run, not how many machines are in the cluster. Node count is a different autoscaler problem.
Full Explanation
The Horizontal Pod Autoscaler adjusts a workload's replica count based on metrics such as CPU or custom metrics. Cluster or node autoscaling (for example Cluster Autoscaler or a cloud node group) is a separate mechanism that adds or removes Nodes when Pods cannot schedule. Confusing the two leads teams to expect HPA to provision hardware when it only changes Pod desired replicas.