Posted On: Aug 31, 2022
Starting with v0.15.0, Karpenter will automatically consolidate Kubernetes cluster workloads onto new EC2 instances to help increase utilization and lower cluster compute costs. Karpenter is a flexible, high-performance Kubernetes cluster autoscaler that helps improve application availability, operational overhead, and cluster compute utilization by launching new EC2 instances that are best fit to the scale, scheduling, and resource requirements of the workloads in a cluster. Customers can use Karpenter with Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS) or any conformant Kubernetes cluster.
As the workloads in a Kubernetes cluster change and scale, it can be necessary to launch new EC2 instances to ensure they have the compute resources they need. Over time, those instances can become under-utilized as some workloads scale down or are removed from the cluster. Workload consolidation for Karpenter automatically looks for opportunities to reschedule these workloads onto a set of more cost-efficient EC2 instances, whether they are already in the cluster or need to be launched. Consolidation for Karpenter can be enabled with a simple configuration change in the Karpenter Provisioner Custom Resource Definition (CRD) in Karpenter v0.15.0 and above.
To learn more about Karpenter, visit karpenter.sh or the Autoscaling page in the Amazon EKS User Guide.