In VCF 9.0, cluster autoscaling is delivered as anoptionalcapability that requires installing theCluster Autoscaleras a standard package. The VCF 9.0 materials explicitly call out Cluster Autoscaler as an optionally installed package for vSphere Kubernetes Service, alongside other optional packages (for example, Harbor, Velero, Istio, etc.). The release information further emphasizes that autoscaling features (including newer behaviors such as scaling from/to zero for supported VKr versions) require that “the autoscaler standard package” be installed.

Operationally, installing the autoscaler package provides the controller that watches pending pods and node utilization signals and then drives the required changes in desired worker capacity. After that controller is present, you typically express scaling intent through the cluster’s declarative configuration (for example, worker pool/node pool constraints and limits) so the autoscaler can act within the boundaries you define. Without the autoscaler package, changing replica counts or expecting automatic node growth/shrink will not produce autoscaling behavior because the control loop that performs those actions is missing.