The Kubernetes cluster grows faster than the business. We keep adding nodes, but utilization sits at 25%. How to save without sacrificing performance?
Right-Sizing Pods¶
VPA recommendations showed: the average pod requests 4x more resources than it actually consumes. Systematic right-sizing — 30% compute savings. Goldilocks (Fairwinds) for automated recommendations.
Karpenter Instead of Cluster Autoscaler¶
Karpenter selects the optimal instance type for pending pods — not just scaling the count, but also the node type. A mix of ARM/x86, spot/on-demand. Bin packing: fewer nodes with higher utilization.
Namespace Quotas and Limit Ranges¶
Every namespace has a resource quota. A team can’t accidentally spin up 100 replicas. LimitRange sets default requests/limits for pods without explicit values.
Idle Resource Detection¶
Kubecost for per-namespace cost breakdown. Weekly report: “namespace X costs $Y and has Z% utilization.” Automatic alerting on idle workloads older than 7 days.
Kubernetes Cost ≠ Mystery¶
Right-sizing + Karpenter + visibility = 40% savings. FinOps for Kubernetes is a necessity, not a nice-to-have.
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