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The orchestrator sizes the worker pool from the queue. You set the bounds and how quickly it responds.

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How the pool is sized

clamped between scaling.minWorkers and scaling.maxWorkers. The average unit time starts at scaling.defaultUnitSeconds and follows measured times as units complete. For example, 80 queued units at 30 seconds each with a 120-second target asks for 20 more workers. The pool grows as soon as the queue calls for it, and shrinks only after the queue has called for fewer workers for scaling.scaleDownCooldownMs. Do not scale the worker Deployment yourself or attach a HorizontalPodAutoscaler to it. The orchestrator resets the replica count on its next check.

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Capacity

Each worker requests worker.resources.requests, 1 vCPU and 1 GB by default, and processes one unit at a time. Add throughput by raising maxWorkers, not by giving workers more CPU. The orchestrator only creates pods, so the cluster needs a node autoscaler to add nodes for them. Before raising maxWorkers into the hundreds, check your cloud’s CPU quota as well as the cluster’s limits. The chart sets requests but no limits. If workers are evicted for memory pressure on large or high-resolution pages, raise worker.resources.requests.memory.

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Cold starts

With minWorkers: 0, the first job after an idle period waits for a worker to be scheduled, pull its image, and start. Set minWorkers to keep workers ready. To speed up bursts on new nodes, see Pre-pulling the worker image.

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Unit size and leases

A PDF over ingest.pageSplitThreshold pages (25) is split into parts of that many pages, and each part is one unit of work. Smaller units spread a large document across more workers. A worker must finish a unit within orchestrator.workLeaseSeconds (300). Otherwise the unit is given to another worker, and after orchestrator.workMaxAttempts (3) attempts the job fails with timed-out. Keep the lease above the time your slowest unit takes, or lower the split threshold.

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Ingest and the orchestrator

Ingest runs ingest.replicas pods. Raise it if uploads or PDF splitting keep ingest busy. The orchestrator always runs as one replica.