openova/platform/keda

KEDA

Event-driven horizontal autoscaling, scale-to-zero. Per-host-cluster infrastructure (see docs/PLATFORM-TECH-STACK.md §3.4) — runs on every host cluster a Sovereign owns.

Status: Accepted | Updated: 2026-04-27

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Overview

KEDA (Kubernetes Event-driven Autoscaling) provides horizontal pod autoscaling based on external metrics and events:

• Queue-based scaling (Kafka via Strimzi)
• Metric-based scaling (Prometheus, custom metrics)
• Cron-based scaling
• Scale-to-zero capability

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Architecture

flowchart TB
    subgraph KEDA["KEDA"]
        Operator[KEDA Operator]
        Metrics[Metrics Adapter]
    end

    subgraph Sources["Event Sources"]
        Kafka[Kafka]
        Prometheus[Prometheus/Mimir]
        Cron[Cron]
    end

    subgraph Workloads["Workloads"]
        Deploy[Deployments]
        Pods[Pods]
    end

    Sources --> Operator
    Operator --> Deploy
    Deploy --> Pods
    Metrics --> Operator

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Scalers

Scaler	Use Case
kafka	Kafka consumer lag
prometheus	Custom metrics
cron	Time-based scaling
cpu/memory	Resource utilization

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Configuration

ScaledObject

apiVersion: keda.sh/v1alpha1
kind: ScaledObject
metadata:
  name: <org>-worker
  namespace: <org>
spec:
  scaleTargetRef:
    name: <org>-worker
  minReplicaCount: 1
  maxReplicaCount: 10
  cooldownPeriod: 300
  triggers:
    - type: kafka
      metadata:
        bootstrapServers: kafka-kafka-bootstrap.databases.svc:9092
        consumerGroup: <org>-workers
        topic: <org>-jobs
        lagThreshold: "100"

Prometheus Scaler

apiVersion: keda.sh/v1alpha1
kind: ScaledObject
metadata:
  name: <org>-api
  namespace: <org>
spec:
  scaleTargetRef:
    name: <org>-api
  minReplicaCount: 2
  maxReplicaCount: 20
  triggers:
    - type: prometheus
      metadata:
        serverAddress: http://mimir.monitoring.svc:8080/prometheus
        metricName: http_requests_per_second
        query: |
          sum(rate(http_requests_total{namespace="<org>"}[1m]))          
        threshold: "100"

Cron Scaler

apiVersion: keda.sh/v1alpha1
kind: ScaledObject
metadata:
  name: <org>-batch
  namespace: <org>
spec:
  scaleTargetRef:
    name: <org>-batch
  minReplicaCount: 0
  maxReplicaCount: 5
  triggers:
    - type: cron
      metadata:
        timezone: UTC
        start: "0 8 * * 1-5"
        end: "0 18 * * 1-5"
        desiredReplicas: "3"

---

VPA + KEDA Coordination

flowchart LR
    subgraph Scaling["Scaling"]
        VPA[VPA<br/>Vertical]
        KEDA[KEDA<br/>Horizontal]
    end

    subgraph Workload["Workload"]
        Deploy[Deployment]
        Pods[Pods]
    end

    VPA -->|"Right-size resources"| Pods
    KEDA -->|"Scale replicas"| Deploy
    Deploy --> Pods

• VPA: Optimizes CPU/memory per pod
• KEDA: Scales replica count based on events
• Combined: Optimal resource utilization with event-driven elasticity

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Scale-to-Zero

KEDA supports scaling to zero for batch workloads:

spec:
  minReplicaCount: 0  # Allow scale-to-zero
  idleReplicaCount: 0  # Scale to zero when idle

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Monitoring

Metric	Description
keda_scaler_active	Whether scaler is active
keda_scaler_metrics_value	Current metric value
keda_scaled_object_errors	Scaling errors

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Part of OpenOva