Cost

This is article 2 in a series on Kubernetes Cost Optimization. In the first article, I went through the three layers where cost waste hides. This article goes deep on one specific pattern: making dev environments exist only when someone is really using them, and scale to zero otherwise. A client of mine was running more than 35 dev environments across their Kubernetes cluster. The client was aware that having dev environments running 24/7 makes no sense, so we started implementing a simple cron-based scaling: environments were up every weekday from 8 AM to 7 PM. This reduces costs, theoretically, by 67% (in practice we talk about ~50%, but that’s another topic). ...

This is article 1 in a series about Kubernetes cost optimization. I explore how cost waste hides across compute, storage, and networking. More importantly, I will explore how to tackle it with automation instead of manual audits. A team right-sizes their deployments very well, and cuts compute costs by 30%. Then someone looks at the rest of the bill and starts investigating. Dozens of volumes and disks sitting unattached. Load balancers fronting services with 2 requests per hour. An entire development environment running 24/7 with no activity for the last 3 days. The compute cuts they celebrated? A fraction of the total waste. ...