What Is Karpenter and Why It Replaced Cluster Autoscaler
How Karpenter's groupless, pod-driven provisioning model solves the scaling limitations that plagued Kubernetes Cluster Autoscaler for years.
karpenter
7 posts
Disruption, Drift, and Consolidation — Karpenter's Node Lifecycle
How Karpenter automatically replaces drifted nodes, consolidates underutilized capacity, and respects disruption budgets to keep clusters lean and current.
From Zero to Production with Karpenter
A hands-on walkthrough of installing Karpenter on EKS, configuring NodePools and EC2NodeClasses, and hardening the setup for production workloads.
GPU and AI/ML Workload Scaling with Karpenter
Dedicated GPU NodePools, cold start fixes for 10GB+ AI images, disruption protection for training jobs, and gang scheduling for distributed workloads.
Production Cost Optimization Patterns with Karpenter
Spot-to-Spot consolidation, instance diversification, right-sizing pod requests, and the real-world strategies that cut Kubernetes compute costs by 20-40%.
Observability and Troubleshooting for Karpenter
Setting up Prometheus metrics scraping, building Grafana dashboards for node lifecycle events, and diagnosing common Karpenter issues in production.
KEDA and Karpenter Together — Pod and Node Scaling Synergy
Combining KEDA's event-driven pod scaling with Karpenter's just-in-time node provisioning for a fully reactive, cost-efficient Kubernetes autoscaling stack.