Metrics Server
Metrics Server is a cluster-wide aggregator of resource usage data in Kubernetes, collecting metrics like CPU and memory usage from each node's kubelet. It provides these metrics through the Kubernetes Metrics API, enabling features such as Horizontal Pod Autoscaling (HPA) and Vertical Pod Autoscaling (VPA) to automatically adjust workloads based on resource consumption. It is a core component for monitoring and autoscaling in Kubernetes environments.
Developers should learn and use Metrics Server when deploying applications on Kubernetes that require automatic scaling based on resource usage, as it is essential for implementing HPA and VPA to optimize performance and cost-efficiency. It is particularly useful in dynamic cloud-native environments where workloads fluctuate, ensuring applications can scale up or down without manual intervention. Use cases include web services with variable traffic, batch processing jobs, and microservices architectures needing responsive resource management.