kubernetes autoscaling_error ai_generated true

failed to get cpu utilization: unable to get metrics for resource cpu: unable to fetch metrics from resource metrics API

ID: kubernetes/k8s-hpa-unable-to-fetch

Also available as: JSON · Markdown

88%Fix Rate

90%Confidence

55Evidence

2023-01-01First Seen

Version Compatibility

Version	Status	Introduced	Deprecated	Notes
8	active	—	—	—

HPA cannot fetch metrics because metrics-server is not installed, not healthy, or pods lack resource requests.

generic

92% success Install or fix metrics-server: kubectl apply -f https://github.com/kubernetes-sigs/metrics-server/releases/latest/download/components.yaml
```
Check if metrics-server is running: kubectl get pods -n kube-system | grep metrics-server
```
Sources: https://kubernetes.io/docs/tasks/debug/debug-cluster/resource-metrics-pipeline/
90% success Ensure all target pods have resource requests defined
```
Add resources.requests.cpu and resources.requests.memory to pod spec containers
```
Sources: https://kubernetes.io/docs/tasks/run-application/horizontal-pod-autoscale/

Common approaches that don't work:

Manually scale replicas instead of using HPA 70% fail
Loses autoscaling capability — doesn't address the root cause
Switch to custom metrics without fixing resource metrics first 65% fail
Custom metrics require additional setup (Prometheus adapter) and are more complex

Leads to:

Preceded by:

Frequently confused with: