thanks for your prompt response,

i did read through this thread prior and it does relate to my understanding of the issue.

it seems like we could

1) use ips instead of host names, not ideal due to the dynamic nature of the ips
2) maintain an upstream configuration externally and use nginx reload to modify the upstream as pods come online

scaling up, as stated in the referenced thread (https://forum.nginx.org/read.php?2,290205) is not supported in stock nginx.

there doesnt seem to be any way to use a least connected policy without individually knowing all the hosts? as in, there is no way to use least connected over a headless service that returns multiple ips; we must need to explicitly declare all known hosts?

i think i understand, thanks again