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KEP: Surge capacity on eviction instead of blocking on PodDisruptionBudget - #6245

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KEP: Surge capacity on eviction instead of blocking on PodDisruptionBudget#6245
monta-riahi wants to merge 1 commit into
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monta-riahi:kep-surge-on-eviction

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@monta-riahi monta-riahi commented Jul 15, 2026

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What this PR does

Adds a provisional KEP proposing an opt-in behavior where an exhausted PodDisruptionBudget triggers a surge of replacement capacity before an eviction completes, instead of blocking the eviction outright with 429 TooManyRequests.

Today API-initiated eviction is a binary decision against the PDB: if DisruptionsAllowed == 0 the eviction is rejected indefinitely. For a single-replica Deployment with minAvailable: 1 this makes the workload undrainable without an outage. This KEP proposes bringing up a replacement first (like maxSurge in a rolling update) and releasing the eviction once the replacement is Ready.

The document is intentionally provisional: it frames the problem, lays out the three cooperating pieces (signal → surge → release), and enumerates the open design questions for SIG discussion (where surge intent lives, who owns the surge, non-surgeable workloads, and the async eviction contract). It is expected to compose with KEP-4212 Declarative Node Maintenance.

/sig node
/sig apps
/kind kep

Provisional KEP proposing an opt-in behavior where an exhausted
PodDisruptionBudget triggers a surge of replacement capacity before an
eviction completes, instead of blocking the eviction outright.

Signed-off-by: Montassar Riahi <montassar.riahi@cimpress.com>
@kubernetes-prow kubernetes-prow Bot added sig/node Categorizes an issue or PR as relevant to SIG Node. sig/apps Categorizes an issue or PR as relevant to SIG Apps. kind/kep Categorizes KEP tracking issues and PRs modifying the KEP directory labels Jul 15, 2026
@github-project-automation github-project-automation Bot moved this to Needs Triage in SIG Apps Jul 15, 2026
@kubernetes-prow kubernetes-prow Bot added the cncf-cla: yes Indicates the PR's author has signed the CNCF CLA. label Jul 15, 2026
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kubernetes-prow Bot requested review from dchen1107 and mrunalp July 15, 2026 23:40
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Welcome @monta-riahi!

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[APPROVALNOTIFIER] This PR is NOT APPROVED

This pull-request has been approved by: monta-riahi
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Hi @monta-riahi. Thanks for your PR.

I'm waiting for a kubernetes member to verify that this patch is reasonable to test. If it is, they should reply with /ok-to-test on its own line. Until that is done, I will not automatically test new commits in this PR, but the usual testing commands by org members will still work.

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@kubernetes-prow kubernetes-prow Bot added needs-ok-to-test Indicates a PR that requires an org member to verify it is safe to test. size/L Denotes a PR that changes 100-499 lines, ignoring generated files. labels Jul 15, 2026
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Description from kubernetes/kubernetes #140599,

When K8s currently evicts a pod, the pod gets terminated/deleted and only then the controller will schedule a new replacement pod, this means that deployments with one replica will experience outage, unlike when rolling them out which will surge a new pod first and only then terminate the old one.

This is rather poor behavior, and it would be much nicer if K8s can be configured to block eviction until a new pod is scheduled (Surging the configured replicas count if needed) instead. e.g. Instead of a PodDisruptionBudget just outright blocking the eviction, it triggers a capacity surge to support the requested budget, allowing the eviction to continue once the new pods are available.

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cncf-cla: yes Indicates the PR's author has signed the CNCF CLA. kind/kep Categorizes KEP tracking issues and PRs modifying the KEP directory needs-ok-to-test Indicates a PR that requires an org member to verify it is safe to test. sig/apps Categorizes an issue or PR as relevant to SIG Apps. sig/node Categorizes an issue or PR as relevant to SIG Node. size/L Denotes a PR that changes 100-499 lines, ignoring generated files.

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