prevent livelock when increasing datastore pool

pkg/ipamd/ipamd.go

@@ -659,11 +659,13 @@ func (c *IPAMContext) updateIPPoolIfRequired(ctx context.Context) {
 	// Each iteration, log the current datastore IP stats
 	log.Debugf("IP stats - total IPs: %d, assigned IPs: %d, cooldown IPs: %d", stats.TotalIPs, stats.AssignedIPs, stats.CooldownIPs)
 
+	// Scale up rapidly to decrease the time it takes for new pods to get an IP assigned. Scale down conservatively to account for pod churn.
 	if datastorePoolTooLow {
-		// Allow for rapid scale up to decrease time it takes for pod to retrieve an ip
-		// but conservative scale down to account for pod churn
-		for datastorePoolStillTooLow := datastorePoolTooLow; datastorePoolStillTooLow; datastorePoolStillTooLow, _ = c.isDatastorePoolTooLow() {
+		// Prevent livelock by limiting the number of attempts at scaling up.
+		count := 0
+		for datastorePoolStillTooLow := datastorePoolTooLow; datastorePoolStillTooLow && count < 3; datastorePoolStillTooLow, _ = c.isDatastorePoolTooLow() {
 			c.increaseDatastorePool(ctx)
+			count += 1
 		}
 	} else if c.isDatastorePoolTooHigh(stats) {
 		c.decreaseDatastorePool(decreaseIPPoolInterval)