---
title: "Autoscale Sample App - Go"
linkTitle: "Autoscaling - Go"
weight: 1
type: "docs"
---

A demonstration of the autoscaling capabilities of a Knative Serving Revision.

## Prerequisites

1. A Kubernetes cluster with [Knative Serving](../../../install/README.md)
   installed.
1. A [metrics installation](../../installing-logging-metrics-traces.md) for
   viewing scaling graphs (optional).
1. The `hey` load generator installed (`go get -u github.com/rakyll/hey`).
1. Clone this repository, and move into the sample directory:

   ```shell
   git clone -b "{{< branch >}}" https://github.com/knative/docs knative-docs
   cd knative-docs
   ```

## Deploy the Service

1. Deploy the [sample](./service.yaml) Knative Service:

   ```
   kubectl apply --filename docs/serving/samples/autoscale-go/service.yaml
   ```

1. Obtain both the hostname and IP address of the `istio-ingressgateway` service
   in the `istio-system` namespace, and then `export` them into the `IP_ADDRESS`
   environment variable.

   Note that each platform where you run your Kubernetes cluster is configured
   differently. Details about the various ways that you can obatin your ingress
   hostname and IP address is available in the Istio documentation under the
   [Control Ingress Traffic](https://istio.io/docs/tasks/traffic-management/ingress/)
   topic.

   **Examples**:

   - For GKE, you run the following commands:

     ```shell
     # In Knative 0.2.x and prior versions, the `knative-ingressgateway` service was used instead of `istio-ingressgateway`.
     INGRESSGATEWAY=knative-ingressgateway

     # The use of `knative-ingressgateway` is deprecated in Knative v0.3.x.
     # Use `istio-ingressgateway` instead, since `knative-ingressgateway`
     # will be removed in Knative v0.4.
     if kubectl get configmap config-istio -n knative-serving &> /dev/null; then
         INGRESSGATEWAY=istio-ingressgateway
     fi

     export IP_ADDRESS=`kubectl get svc $INGRESSGATEWAY --namespace istio-system --output jsonpath="{.status.loadBalancer.ingress[*].ip}"`
     ```

   - For Minikube, you run the following command:

     ```shell
     export IP_ADDRESS=$(minikube ip)
     ```

   - For Docker Desktop, you run the following command:

     ```shell
     # The value can be 127.0.0.1 as well
     export IP_ADDRESS=localhost
     ```

## Load the Service

1. Make a request to the autoscale app to see it consume some resources.

   ```shell
   curl --header "Host: autoscale-go.default.example.com" "http://${IP_ADDRESS?}?sleep=100&prime=10000&bloat=5"
   ```

   ```
   Allocated 5 Mb of memory.
   The largest prime less than 10000 is 9973.
   Slept for 100.13 milliseconds.
   ```

1. Send 30 seconds of traffic maintaining 50 in-flight requests.

   ```shell
   hey -z 30s -c 50 \
     -host "autoscale-go.default.example.com" \
     "http://${IP_ADDRESS?}?sleep=100&prime=10000&bloat=5" \
     && kubectl get pods
   ```

   ```shell
   Summary:
     Total:        30.3379 secs
     Slowest:      0.7433 secs
     Fastest:      0.1672 secs
     Average:      0.2778 secs
     Requests/sec: 178.7861

     Total data:   542038 bytes
     Size/request: 99 bytes

   Response time histogram:
     0.167 [1]     |
     0.225 [1462]  |■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■
     0.282 [1303]  |■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■
     0.340 [1894]  |■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■
     0.398 [471]   |■■■■■■■■■■
     0.455 [159]   |■■■
     0.513 [68]    |■
     0.570 [18]    |
     0.628 [14]    |
     0.686 [21]    |
     0.743 [13]    |

   Latency distribution:
     10% in 0.1805 secs
     25% in 0.2197 secs
     50% in 0.2801 secs
     75% in 0.3129 secs
     90% in 0.3596 secs
     95% in 0.4020 secs
     99% in 0.5457 secs

   Details (average, fastest, slowest):
     DNS+dialup:   0.0007 secs, 0.1672 secs, 0.7433 secs
     DNS-lookup:   0.0000 secs, 0.0000 secs, 0.0000 secs
     req write:    0.0001 secs, 0.0000 secs, 0.0045 secs
     resp wait:    0.2766 secs, 0.1669 secs, 0.6633 secs
     resp read:    0.0002 secs, 0.0000 secs, 0.0065 secs

   Status code distribution:
     [200] 5424 responses
   ```

   ```shell
   NAME                                             READY   STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE
   autoscale-go-00001-deployment-78cdc67bf4-2w4sk   3/3     Running   0          26s
   autoscale-go-00001-deployment-78cdc67bf4-dd2zb   3/3     Running   0          24s
   autoscale-go-00001-deployment-78cdc67bf4-pg55p   3/3     Running   0          18s
   autoscale-go-00001-deployment-78cdc67bf4-q8bf9   3/3     Running   0          1m
   autoscale-go-00001-deployment-78cdc67bf4-thjbq   3/3     Running   0          26s
   ```

## Analysis

### Algorithm

Knative Serving autoscaling is based on the average number of in-flight requests
per pod (concurrency). The system has a default
[target concurrency of 100](https://github.com/knative/serving/blob/3f00c39e289ed4bfb84019131651c2e4ea660ab5/config/config-autoscaler.yaml#L35-L41)
but [we used 10](service.yaml#L25-L26) for our service. We loaded the service
with 50 concurrent requests so the autoscaler created 5 pods
(`50 concurrent requests / target of 10 = 5 pods`)

#### Panic

The autoscaler calculates average concurrency over a 60 second window so it
takes a minute for the system to stablize at the desired level of concurrency.
However the autoscaler also calculates a 6 second `panic` window and will enter
panic mode if that window reached 2x the target concurrency. In panic mode the
autoscaler operates on the shorter, more sensitive panic window. Once the panic
conditions are no longer met for 60 seconds, the autoscaler will return to the
initial 60 second `stable` window.

```
                                                       |
                                  Panic Target--->  +--| 20
                                                    |  |
                                                    | <------Panic Window
                                                    |  |
       Stable Target--->  +-------------------------|--| 10   CONCURRENCY
                          |                         |  |
                          |                      <-----------Stable Window
                          |                         |  |
--------------------------+-------------------------+--+ 0
120                       60                           0
                     TIME
```

#### Customization

The autoscaler supports customization through annotations. There are two
autoscaler classes built into Knative:

1. `kpa.autoscaling.knative.dev` which is the concurrency-based autoscaler
   described above (the default), and
2. `hpa.autoscaling.knative.dev` which delegates to the Kubernetes HPA which
   autoscales on CPU usage.

   Example of a Service scaled on CPU:

   ```yaml
   apiVersion: serving.knative.dev/v1alpha1
   kind: Service
   metadata:
     name: autoscale-go
     namespace: default
   spec:
     template:
       metadata:
         annotations:
           # Standard Kubernetes CPU-based autoscaling.
           autoscaling.knative.dev/class: hpa.autoscaling.knative.dev
           autoscaling.knative.dev/metric: cpu
       spec:
         containers:
           - image: gcr.io/knative-samples/autoscale-go:0.1
   ```

   Additionally the autoscaler targets and scaling bounds can be specified in
   annotations. Example of a Service with custom targets and scale bounds:

   ```yaml
   apiVersion: serving.knative.dev/v1alpha1
   kind: Service
   metadata:
     name: autoscale-go
     namespace: default
   spec:
     template:
       metadata:
         annotations:
           # Knative concurrency-based autoscaling (default).
           autoscaling.knative.dev/class: kpa.autoscaling.knative.dev
           autoscaling.knative.dev/metric: concurrency
           # Target 10 requests in-flight per pod.
           autoscaling.knative.dev/target: "10"
           # Disable scale to zero with a minScale of 1.
           autoscaling.knative.dev/minScale: "1"
           # Limit scaling to 100 pods.
           autoscaling.knative.dev/maxScale: "100"
       spec:
         containers:
           - image: gcr.io/knative-samples/autoscale-go:0.1
   ```

   Note: for an `hpa.autoscaling.knative.dev` class service, the
   `autoscaling.knative.dev/target` specifies the CPU percentage target (default
   `"80"`).

#### Demo

View the [Kubecon Demo](https://youtu.be/OPSIPr-Cybs) of Knative autoscaler
customization (32 minutes).

### Dashboards

View the Knative Serving Scaling and Request dashboards (if configured).

```
kubectl port-forward --namespace knative-monitoring $(kubectl get pods --namespace knative-monitoring --selector=app=grafana  --output=jsonpath="{.items..metadata.name}") 3000
```

![scale dashboard](./scale-dashboard.png)

![request dashboard](./request-dashboard.png)

### Other Experiments

1. Send 60 seconds of traffic maintaining 100 concurrent requests.

   ```shell
   hey -z 60s -c 100 \
     -host "autoscale-go.default.example.com" \
     "http://${IP_ADDRESS?}?sleep=100&prime=10000&bloat=5"
   ```

1. Send 60 seconds of traffic maintaining 100 qps with short requests (10 ms).

   ```shell
   hey -z 60s -q 100 \
     -host "autoscale-go.default.example.com" \
     "http://${IP_ADDRESS?}?sleep=10"
   ```

1. Send 60 seconds of traffic maintaining 100 qps with long requests (1 sec).

   ```shell
   hey -z 60s -q 100 \
     -host "autoscale-go.default.example.com" \
     "http://${IP_ADDRESS?}?sleep=1000"
   ```

1. Send 60 seconds of traffic with heavy CPU usage (~1 cpu/sec/request, total
   100 cpus).

   ```shell
   hey -z 60s -q 100 \
     -host "autoscale-go.default.example.com" \
     "http://${IP_ADDRESS?}?prime=40000000"
   ```

1. Send 60 seconds of traffic with heavy memory usage (1 gb/request, total 5
   gb).

   ```shell
   hey -z 60s -c 5 \
     -host "autoscale-go.default.example.com" \
     "http://${IP_ADDRESS?}?bloat=1000"
   ```

## Cleanup

```
kubectl delete --filename docs/serving/samples/autoscale-go/service.yaml
```

## Further reading

[Autoscaling Developer Documentation](https://github.com/knative/serving/blob/master/docs/scaling/DEVELOPMENT.md)
