KubeDB

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New to KubeDB? Please start here.

Horizontal Scale Qdrant Cluster

This guide will show you how to use KubeDB Ops Manager to increase/decrease the number of nodes in a Qdrant cluster.

Before You Begin

  • At first, you need to have a Kubernetes cluster, and the kubectl command-line tool must be configured to communicate with your cluster. If you do not already have a cluster, you can create one by using kind.

  • Install KubeDB in your cluster following the steps here.

  • You should be familiar with the following KubeDB concepts:

To keep everything isolated, we are going to use a separate namespace called demo throughout this tutorial.

$ kubectl create ns demo
namespace/demo created

Note: YAML files used in this tutorial are stored in docs/examples/qdrant/scaling/horizontal-scaling directory of kubedb/docs repository.

Apply Horizontal Scaling on Qdrant Cluster

Here, we are going to deploy a Qdrant cluster using a supported version by KubeDB operator. Then we are going to apply horizontal scaling on it.

Prepare Cluster

At first, we are going to deploy a cluster with 3 nodes. Then, we are going to add two additional nodes through horizontal scaling. Finally, we will remove 1 node from the cluster again via horizontal scaling.

Deploy Qdrant Cluster:

In this section, we are going to deploy a Qdrant cluster with 3 nodes. Then, in the next section we will scale the cluster using horizontal scaling. Below is the YAML of the Qdrant CR that we are going to create:

apiVersion: kubedb.com/v1alpha2
kind: Qdrant
metadata:
  name: qdrant-sample
  namespace: demo
spec:
  version: "1.17.0"
  mode: Distributed
  replicas: 3
  storage:
    storageClassName: "standard"
    accessModes:
      - ReadWriteOnce
    resources:
      requests:
        storage: 1Gi
  deletionPolicy: WipeOut

Let’s create the Qdrant CR we have shown above:

$ kubectl create -f https://github.com/kubedb/docs/raw/v2026.10.12/docs/examples/qdrant/scaling/horizontal-scaling/qdrant.yaml
qdrant.kubedb.com/qdrant-sample created

Wait for the cluster to be ready:

KubeDB operator watches for Qdrant objects using Kubernetes API. When a Qdrant object is created, KubeDB operator will create a new PetSet, Services, and Secrets, etc.

Now, watch Qdrant is going to Running state and also watch PetSet and its pods:

$ watch -n 3 kubectl get qdrant -n demo qdrant-sample
Every 3.0s: kubectl get qdrant -n demo qdrant-sample

NAME             VERSION   STATUS   AGE
qdrant-sample    1.17.0    Ready    4m40m


$ watch -n 3 kubectl get petset -n demo qdrant-sample
Every 3.0s: kubectl get petset -n demo qdrant-sample

NAME              READY   AGE
qdrant-sample     3/3     4m41m


$ watch -n 3 kubectl get pods -n demo
Every 3.0s: kubectl get pod -n demo

NAME                READY   STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE
qdrant-sample-0     1/1     Running   0          4m25m
qdrant-sample-1     1/1     Running   0          4m26m
qdrant-sample-2     1/1     Running   0          4m26m

Let’s check the current number of nodes:

$ kubectl get qdrant -n demo qdrant-sample -o=jsonpath='{.spec.replicas}{"\n"}'
3

We are ready to apply the QdrantOpsRequest CR to scale horizontally.

Scale Up

Here, we are going to scale up the cluster from 3 nodes to 5 nodes.

Create QdrantOpsRequest:

apiVersion: ops.kubedb.com/v1alpha1
kind: QdrantOpsRequest
metadata:
  name: qdops-hscale-up
  namespace: demo
spec:
  type: HorizontalScaling
  databaseRef:
    name: qdrant-sample
  horizontalScaling:
    node: 5
  timeout: 5m
  apply: IfReady

Here,

  • spec.databaseRef.name specifies that we are performing horizontal scaling on qdrant-sample Qdrant database.
  • spec.type specifies that we are performing HorizontalScaling on our database.
  • spec.horizontalScaling.node specifies the desired number of nodes after scaling.
  • spec.timeout specifies the timeout for the operation (learn more here).
  • spec.apply specifies when to apply the operation (learn more here).

Let’s create the QdrantOpsRequest CR we have shown above:

$ kubectl apply -f https://github.com/kubedb/docs/raw/v2026.10.12/docs/examples/qdrant/scaling/horizontal-scaling/hscale-up.yaml
qdrantopsrequest.ops.kubedb.com/qdops-hscale-up created

Verify Qdrant scale-up completed successfully:

$ watch -n 3 kubectl get QdrantOpsRequest -n demo qdops-hscale-up
Every 3.0s: kubectl get QdrantOpsRequest -n demo qdops-hscale-up

NAME               TYPE               STATUS       AGE
qdops-hscale-up    HorizontalScaling  Successful   3m57s

Now let’s verify that the number of nodes has increased:

$ kubectl get qdrant -n demo qdrant-sample -o=jsonpath='{.spec.replicas}{"\n"}'
5

$ kubectl get pods -n demo
NAME                READY   STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE
qdrant-sample-0     1/1     Running   0          10m
qdrant-sample-1     1/1     Running   0          10m
qdrant-sample-2     1/1     Running   0          10m
qdrant-sample-3     1/1     Running   0          2m
qdrant-sample-4     1/1     Running   0          1m

Scale Down

Here, we are going to scale down the cluster from 5 nodes to 4 nodes.

Create QdrantOpsRequest:

apiVersion: ops.kubedb.com/v1alpha1
kind: QdrantOpsRequest
metadata:
  name: qdops-hscale-down
  namespace: demo
spec:
  type: HorizontalScaling
  databaseRef:
    name: qdrant-sample
  horizontalScaling:
    node: 4

Let’s create the QdrantOpsRequest CR we have shown above:

$ kubectl apply -f https://github.com/kubedb/docs/raw/v2026.10.12/docs/examples/qdrant/scaling/horizontal-scaling/hscale-down.yaml
qdrantopsrequest.ops.kubedb.com/qdops-hscale-down created

Verify Qdrant scale-down completed successfully:

$ watch -n 3 kubectl get QdrantOpsRequest -n demo qdops-hscale-down
Every 3.0s: kubectl get QdrantOpsRequest -n demo qdops-hscale-down

NAME                 TYPE               STATUS       AGE
qdops-hscale-down    HorizontalScaling  Successful   2m15s

Now let’s verify that the number of nodes has decreased:

$ kubectl get qdrant -n demo qdrant-sample -o=jsonpath='{.spec.replicas}{"\n"}'
4

$ kubectl get pods -n demo
NAME                READY   STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE
qdrant-sample-0     1/1     Running   0          14m
qdrant-sample-1     1/1     Running   0          14m
qdrant-sample-2     1/1     Running   0          14m
qdrant-sample-3     1/1     Running   0          6m

We have successfully performed horizontal scaling on the Qdrant cluster.

Next Steps

Cleaning Up

To clean up the Kubernetes resources created by this tutorial, run:

kubectl delete qdrant -n demo qdrant-sample
kubectl delete QdrantOpsRequest -n demo qdops-hscale-up qdops-hscale-down

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