<p>I'm defining this autoscaler with kubernetes and GCE and I'm wondering what exactly should I specify for <code>targetCPUUtilizationPercentage</code>. That target points to what exactly? Is it the total CPU in my cluster? When the pods referenced in this autoscaler consume more than <code>targetCPUUtilizationPercentage</code> what happens?</p>

<p>The CPU utilization is the average CPU usage of a all pods in a deployment across the last minute divided by the requested CPU of this deployment. If the mean of the pods' CPU utilization is higher than the target you defined, then your replicas will be adjusted accordingly.</p>
<p>You can read more about this topic <a href="https://github.com/kubernetes/website/blob/main/content/en/docs/tasks/run-application/horizontal-pod-autoscale.md#algorithm-details" rel="nofollow noreferrer">here</a>.</p>
