Kubernetes HPA fails to detect a successfully published custom metric from Stackdriver - kubernetes

Question

I'm trying to scale a Kubernetes Deployment using a HorizontalPodAutoscaler, which listens to a custom metrics through Stackdriver.
I'm having a GKE cluster, with a Stackdriver adapter enabled.
I'm able to publish the custom metric type to Stackdriver, and following is the way it's being displayed in Stackdriver's Metric Explorer.
This is how I have defined my HPA:
apiVersion: autoscaling/v2beta1
kind: HorizontalPodAutoscaler
metadata:
name: example-hpa
spec:
minReplicas: 1
maxReplicas: 10
metrics:
- type: External
external:
metricName: custom.googleapis.com|worker_pod_metrics|baz
targetValue: 400
scaleTargetRef:
apiVersion: apps/v1
kind: Deployment
name: test-app-group-1-1
After successfully creating example-hpa, executing kubectl get hpa example-hpa, always shows TARGETS as <unknown>, and never detects the value from custom metrics.
NAME REFERENCE TARGETS MINPODS MAXPODS REPLICAS AGE
example-hpa Deployment/test-app-group-1-1 <unknown>/400 1 10 1 18m
I'm using a Java client which runs locally to publish my custom metrics.
I have given the appropriate resource labels as mentioned here (hard coded - so that it can run without a problem in local environment). I have followed this document to create the Java client.
private static MonitoredResource prepareMonitoredResourceDescriptor() {
Map<String, String> resourceLabels = new HashMap<>();
resourceLabels.put("project_id", "<<<my-project-id>>>);
resourceLabels.put("pod_id", "<my pod UID>");
resourceLabels.put("container_name", "");
resourceLabels.put("zone", "asia-southeast1-b");
resourceLabels.put("cluster_name", "my-cluster");
resourceLabels.put("namespace_id", "mynamespace");
resourceLabels.put("instance_id", "");
return MonitoredResource.newBuilder()
.setType("gke_container")
.putAllLabels(resourceLabels)
.build();
}
What am I doing wrong in the above-mentioned steps please? Thank you in advance for any answers provided!
EDIT [RESOLVED]:
I think I have had some misconfigurations, since kubectl describe hpa [NAME] --v=9 showed me some 403 status code, as well as I was using type: External instead of type: Pods (Thanks MWZ for your answer, pointing out this mistake).
I managed to fix it by creating a new project, a new service account, and a new GKE cluster (basically everything from the beginning again). Then I changed my yaml file as follows, exactly as this document explains.
apiVersion: autoscaling/v2beta1
kind: HorizontalPodAutoscaler
metadata:
name: test-app-group-1-1
namespace: default
spec:
scaleTargetRef:
apiVersion: apps/v1beta1
kind: Deployment
name: test-app-group-1-1
minReplicas: 1
maxReplicas: 5
metrics:
- type: Pods # Earlier this was type: External
pods: # Earlier this was external:
metricName: baz # metricName: custom.googleapis.com|worker_pod_metrics|baz
targetAverageValue: 20
I'm now exporting as custom.googleapis.com/baz, and NOT as custom.googleapis.com/worker_pod_metrics/baz. Also, now I'm explicitly specifying the namespace for my HPA in the yaml.

Answer 1

Since you can see your custom metric in Stackdriver GUI I'm guessing metrics are correctly exported. Based on Autoscaling Deployments with Custom Metrics I believe you wrongly defined metric to be used by HPA to scale the deployment.
Please try using this YAML:
apiVersion: autoscaling/v2beta1
kind: HorizontalPodAutoscaler
metadata:
name: example-hpa
spec:
minReplicas: 1
maxReplicas: 10
metrics:
- type: Pods
pods:
metricName: baz
targetAverageValue: 400
scaleTargetRef:
apiVersion: apps/v1
kind: Deployment
name: test-app-group-1-1
Please have in mind that:
The HPA uses the metrics to compute an average and compare it to the
target average value. In the application-to-Stackdriver export
example, a Deployment contains Pods that export metric. The following
manifest file describes a HorizontalPodAutoscaler object that scales a
Deployment based on the target average value for the metric.
Troubleshooting steps described on the page above can also be useful.
Side-note
Since above HPA is using beta API autoscaling/v2beta1 I got error when running kubectl describe hpa [DEPLOYMENT_NAME]. I ran kubectl describe hpa [DEPLOYMENT_NAME] --v=9 and got response in JSON.

Answer 2

It is a good practice to put some unique labels to target your metrics. Right now, based on metrics labelled in your java client, only pod_id looks unique which can't be used due to its stateless nature.
So, I would suggest you try introducing a deployment/metrics wide unqiue identifier.
resourceLabels.put("<identifier>", "<could-be-deployment-name>");
After this, you can try modifying your HPA with something similar to following:
kind: HorizontalPodAutoscaler
metadata:
name: example-hpa
spec:
minReplicas: 1
maxReplicas: 10
metrics:
- type: External
external:
metricName: custom.googleapis.com|worker_pod_metrics|baz
metricSelector:
matchLabels:
# define labels to target
metric.labels.identifier: <deployment-name>
# scale +1 whenever it crosses multiples of mentioned value
targetAverageValue: "400"
scaleTargetRef:
apiVersion: apps/v1
kind: Deployment
name: test-app-group-1-1
Apart from this, this setup has no issues and should work smooth.
Helper command to see what metrics are exposed to HPA :
kubectl get --raw "/apis/external.metrics.k8s.io/v1beta1/namespaces/default/custom.googleapis.com|worker_pod_metrics|baz" | jq