Docs: Clarify rate limits are per ingress controller replica. (#12714)

Co-authored-by: Marco Ebert <[email protected]>

docs/user-guide/nginx-configuration/annotations.md

@@ -550,10 +550,15 @@ By default the controller redirects all requests to an existing service that pro
 
 These annotations define limits on connections and transmission rates.  These can be used to mitigate [DDoS Attacks](https://www.nginx.com/blog/mitigating-ddos-attacks-with-nginx-and-nginx-plus).
 
-* `nginx.ingress.kubernetes.io/limit-connections`: number of concurrent connections allowed from a single IP address. A 503 error is returned when exceeding this limit.
-* `nginx.ingress.kubernetes.io/limit-rps`: number of requests accepted from a given IP each second. The burst limit is set to this limit multiplied by the burst multiplier, the default multiplier is 5. When clients exceed this limit,  [limit-req-status-code](https://kubernetes.github.io/ingress-nginx/user-guide/nginx-configuration/configmap/#limit-req-status-code) ***default:*** 503 is returned.
-* `nginx.ingress.kubernetes.io/limit-rpm`: number of requests accepted from a given IP each minute. The burst limit is set to this limit multiplied by the burst multiplier, the default multiplier is 5. When clients exceed this limit,  [limit-req-status-code](https://kubernetes.github.io/ingress-nginx/user-guide/nginx-configuration/configmap/#limit-req-status-code) ***default:*** 503 is returned.
-* `nginx.ingress.kubernetes.io/limit-burst-multiplier`: multiplier of the limit rate for burst size. The default burst multiplier is 5, this annotation override the default multiplier. When clients exceed this limit,  [limit-req-status-code](https://kubernetes.github.io/ingress-nginx/user-guide/nginx-configuration/configmap/#limit-req-status-code) ***default:*** 503 is returned.
+!!! attention
+    Rate limits are applied per Ingress NGINX controller replica. 
+    If you're running multiple replicas or using a horizontal pod autoscaler (HPA), the effective rate limit will be multiplied by the number of replicas.
+    When using HPA, the exact rate limit becomes dynamic as the number of replicas may change based on load.
+
+* `nginx.ingress.kubernetes.io/limit-connections`: number of concurrent connections allowed from a single IP address per controller replica. A 503 error is returned when exceeding this limit.
+* `nginx.ingress.kubernetes.io/limit-rps`: number of requests accepted from a given IP each second per controller replica. The burst limit is set to this limit multiplied by the burst multiplier, the default multiplier is 5. When clients exceed this limit, [limit-req-status-code](https://kubernetes.github.io/ingress-nginx/user-guide/nginx-configuration/configmap/#limit-req-status-code) ***default:*** 503 is returned.
+* `nginx.ingress.kubernetes.io/limit-rpm`: number of requests accepted from a given IP each minute per controller replica. The burst limit is set to this limit multiplied by the burst multiplier, the default multiplier is 5. When clients exceed this limit, [limit-req-status-code](https://kubernetes.github.io/ingress-nginx/user-guide/nginx-configuration/configmap/#limit-req-status-code) ***default:*** 503 is returned.
+* `nginx.ingress.kubernetes.io/limit-burst-multiplier`: multiplier of the limit rate for burst size. The default burst multiplier is 5, this annotation override the default multiplier. When clients exceed this limit, [limit-req-status-code](https://kubernetes.github.io/ingress-nginx/user-guide/nginx-configuration/configmap/#limit-req-status-code) ***default:*** 503 is returned.
 * `nginx.ingress.kubernetes.io/limit-rate-after`: initial number of kilobytes after which the further transmission of a response to a given connection will be rate limited. This feature must be used with [proxy-buffering](#proxy-buffering) enabled.
 * `nginx.ingress.kubernetes.io/limit-rate`: number of kilobytes per second allowed to send to a given connection.  The zero value disables rate limiting. This feature must be used with [proxy-buffering](#proxy-buffering) enabled.
 * `nginx.ingress.kubernetes.io/limit-whitelist`: client IP source ranges to be excluded from rate-limiting. The value is a comma separated list of CIDRs.