Kubernetes and mysql scalability

Hello everyone… I have a project with mysql, keyrock and apache on Kubernetes…

I would like to scale up my deployment with hpa, but i have a problem with mysql database…
I tried statefulsets, but it didn’t work. It created a second empty mysql database, not a copy.

I also tried with operators, but i really cant understand how exactly they work.

Do you believe that i should use vpa for mysql and hpa for the other or it would be better to use nothing for mysql? In the first case, it will create replicas for keyrock and apache and scale up resources for mysql.

I don’t know how to deal with the problem with mysql.

Thank youu