website/content/en/docs/concepts/configuration/scheduler-perf-tuning.md

---
reviewers:
- bsalamat
title: Scheduler Performance Tuning
content_template: templates/concept
weight: 70
---

{{% capture overview %}}

{{< feature-state for_k8s_version="1.14" state="beta" >}}

Kube-scheduler is the Kubernetes default scheduler. It is responsible for
placement of Pods on Nodes in a cluster. Nodes in a cluster that meet the
scheduling requirements of a Pod are called "feasible" Nodes for the Pod. The
scheduler finds feasible Nodes for a Pod and then runs a set of functions to
score the feasible Nodes and picks a Node with the highest score among the
feasible ones to run the Pod. The scheduler then notifies the API server about
this decision in a process called "Binding".

{{% /capture %}}

{{% capture body %}}

## Percentage of Nodes to Score

Before Kubernetes 1.12, Kube-scheduler used to check the feasibility of all
nodes in a cluster and then scored the feasible ones. Kubernetes 1.12 added a
new feature that allows the scheduler to stop looking for more feasible nodes
once it finds a certain number of them. This improves the scheduler's
performance in large clusters. The number is specified as a percentage of the
cluster size. The percentage can be controlled by a configuration option called
`percentageOfNodesToScore`. The range should be between 1 and 100. Larger values
are considered as 100%. Zero is equivalent to not providing the config option.
Kubernetes 1.14 has logic to find the percentage of nodes to score based on the
size of the cluster if it is not specified in the configuration. It uses a
linear formula which yields 50% for a 100-node cluster. The formula yields 10%
for a 5000-node cluster. The lower bound for the automatic value is 5%. In other
words, the scheduler always scores at least 5% of the cluster no matter how
large the cluster is, unless the user provides the config option with a value 
smaller than 5.

Below is an example configuration that sets `percentageOfNodesToScore` to 50%.

```yaml
apiVersion: kubescheduler.config.k8s.io/v1alpha1
kind: KubeSchedulerConfiguration
algorithmSource:
  provider: DefaultProvider

...

percentageOfNodesToScore: 50
```

{{< note >}} In clusters with less than 50 feasible nodes, the scheduler still
checks all the nodes, simply because there are not enough feasible nodes to stop
the scheduler's search early. {{< /note >}}

**To disable this feature**, you can set `percentageOfNodesToScore` to 100.

### Tuning percentageOfNodesToScore

`percentageOfNodesToScore` must be a value between 1 and 100 with the default
value being calculated based on the cluster size. There is also a hardcoded
minimum value of 50 nodes. This means that changing
this option to lower values in clusters with several hundred nodes will not have
much impact on the number of feasible nodes that the scheduler tries to find.
This is intentional as this option is unlikely to improve performance noticeably
in smaller clusters. In large clusters with over a 1000 nodes setting this value
to lower numbers may show a noticeable performance improvement.

An important note to consider when setting this value is that when a smaller
number of nodes in a cluster are checked for feasibility, some nodes are not
sent to be scored for a given Pod. As a result, a Node which could possibly
score a higher value for running the given Pod might not even be passed to the
scoring phase. This would result in a less than ideal placement of the Pod. For
this reason, the value should not be set to very low percentages. A general rule
of thumb is to never set the value to anything lower than 10. Lower values
should be used only when the scheduler's throughput is critical for your
application and the score of nodes is not important. In other words, you prefer
to run the Pod on any Node as long as it is feasible.

If your cluster has several hundred Nodes or fewer, we do not recommend lowering
the default value of this configuration option. It is unlikely to improve the
scheduler's performance significantly.

### How the scheduler iterates over Nodes

This section is intended for those who want to understand the internal details
of this feature.

In order to give all the Nodes in a cluster a fair chance of being considered
for running Pods, the scheduler iterates over the nodes in a round robin
fashion. You can imagine that Nodes are in an array. The scheduler starts from
the start of the array and checks feasibility of the nodes until it finds enough
Nodes as specified by `percentageOfNodesToScore`. For the next Pod, the
scheduler continues from the point in the Node array that it stopped at when
checking feasibility of Nodes for the previous Pod.

If Nodes are in multiple zones, the scheduler iterates over Nodes in various
zones to ensure that Nodes from different zones are considered in the
feasibility checks. As an example, consider six nodes in two zones:

```
Zone 1: Node 1, Node 2, Node 3, Node 4
Zone 2: Node 5, Node 6
```

The Scheduler evaluates feasibility of the nodes in this order:

```
Node 1, Node 5, Node 2, Node 6, Node 3, Node 4
```

After going over all the Nodes, it goes back to Node 1.

{{% /capture %}}