<p>I was wondering if it was really relevant to set “requests” (CPU/MEM) values if I’m not using HPA ?</p>
<p>If those values are not used to scale up or down some pods, what is the point ?</p>

<p>It's fine and it will work if you don't provide the <strong>requests</strong> (CPU/MEM) to workloads.</p>
<p>But consider the scenario, suppose you have 1-2 Nodes with a capacity of <strong>1</strong> <strong>GB</strong> and you have not mentioned the <strong>requests</strong>.</p>
<p>Already running application utilizing half of the node around <strong>0.5 GB</strong>. Your new app needs now <strong>1 GB</strong> to start so K8s will schedule the PODs onto that node as not aware of the minimum requirement to start the application.</p>
<p>After that whatever happens, we call it a <strong>Crash</strong>.</p>
<p>If you have extra resources in the cluster, setting affinity and confidence in the application code you can go without putting the requests (<strong>not best practice</strong>).</p>
