Kubernetes Academy - Zesty

Tuning Karpenter for workloads with spiky traffic

April 23, 2026

Karpenter does a great job in environments where traffic is predictable. It watches for unschedulable pods and provisions nodes to fit them. In spiky environments, that model starts to show cracks. Pods arrive in bursts, capacity is not there yet, and every second of delay translates directly into user-facing latency or backlog. You essentially have two levers: Most teams try the first, then get surprised by the bill. This guide focuses on the second path: making Karpenter fast enough that you do not need to overprovision. Before diving into tuning, it helps to understand exactly how Karpenter reacts to demand and [...]

By Ido Slonimsky
Tech Lead, Zesty

Why stateful workloads are often the biggest scaling bottleneck in K8s

March 26, 2026

Kubernetes was built for elasticity. With modern autoscaling tools like Karpenter and Cluster Autoscaler, clusters can spin up new nodes in seconds to handle traffic spikes. But in many environments, scaling still feels slower than expected. The reason is often the same: Stateful workloads. Databases, message brokers, and search engines frequently become the largest bottleneck in cluster scaling, introducing delays that slow down the entire environment. While stateless workloads scale instantly, stateful workloads introduce storage dependencies, scheduling constraints, and orchestration delays that reduce overall elasticity. For organizations running large Kubernetes clusters, understanding this difference is critical for improving both performance and cost [...]

By Ilya Pisatzkov
Solution Architect

Using Karpenter and still overpaying?

March 12, 2026

Karpenter has become the autoscaler of choice for many Kubernetes platform teams, and for good reason. It provisions nodes in real time, selects efficient instance types, consolidates underutilized capacity, and removes much of the operational burden associated with traditional node groups. On paper, the value proposition is compelling: the right nodes, at the right time, for the right price. Many teams expect that adopting Karpenter will significantly reduce their infrastructure costs, but oftentimes, the cloud bill barely changes. If you’ve automated scaling but haven’t seen meaningful savings, the issue usually isn’t Karpenter itself. More often, it is a combination of request [...]

By Zesty Team

How to deal with workloads HPA can’t handle

December 11, 2025

HPA has become one of the most relied-upon tools in Kubernetes operations, mostly due to its ability to cover many common scaling event use cases. However, there are workloads even HPA can’t help. A DaemonSet that claims resources on every node with no ability to scale. A Postgres primary in a StatefulSet, which does not support multiple primary replicas. A batch Job that spikes unpredictably and HPA has no bearing over. These cases expose the limits of replica-based scaling, reminding us that Kubernetes has more workload patterns than HPA was ever meant to address. This article breaks down why HPA falls short in [...]

By Ilan Ovadia
R&D Team Lead

How to avoid surprise node churn in Karpenter

November 27, 2025

Thank goodness for Karpenter. Really. I can’t imagine my life without it. But it’s not perfect, and it’s not foolproof. Sometimes, in the middle of a calm afternoon, nodes start disappearing for no apparent reason. But there is a reason, and it’s wrong configuration. This guide is about preventing that situation. You’ll learn how Karpenter decides to disrupt nodes, what each disruption mechanism is doing, and how to configure disruption so it saves you money without creating reliability debt. By the end, you’ll have a repeatable setup and validation flow that avoids replacement storms and unexpected drains. 1. Before You Touch [...]

By Omer Hamerman
Principal DevOps Engineer

How to Configure Karpenter for Scalable, Cost-Efficient EKS Clusters

October 30, 2025

Karpenter has become the de facto choice for Kubernetes teams that need intelligent, dynamic scaling on AWS. It automates how compute capacity is provisioned and retired, ensuring workloads always have the resources they need without waste. Yet, configuring Karpenter the right way for your environment is challenging, so it keeps your clusters performant, reliable, and cost-effective. This guide walks through the core concepts and best practices for configuring Karpenter, with clear examples and checkpoints you can follow directly in your environment. Understand the Context Before You Configure Before diving into YAML files, it’s important to understand how Karpenter fits within your existing [...]

By Ido Slonimsky
Tech Lead, Zesty