AWS

Best practices for upgrading EKS clusters with Karpenter

October 16, 2025
5 MIN READ

Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS) makes running Kubernetes a much smoother experience, but upgrading an EKS cluster can be anything but smooth. An upgrade touches both the control plane (the brain of your cluster) and the data plane (the worker nodes actually running workloads). Each component can break things if not handled properly. Karpenter, the open-source cluster autoscaler, brings efficiency to node provisioning and scaling. But because it directly interacts with your workloads and AWS infrastructure, any EKS version change can affect how Karpenter behaves. The reality: upgrading is unavoidable, but with the right plan you can do it without breaking things.

By Omer Hamerman
Principal DevOps Engineer

How to make your Kubernetes applications spot interruption-tolerant

September 01, 2025
5 MIN READ

Spot Instances are one of the most powerful levers we have for cutting cloud costs. They’re also one of the riskiest to use if not done right. The reason is simple: Spot capacity can vanish at any time. When AWS needs the capacity back, your nodes get interrupted, and if your workloads can’t survive that, you’ll be paged into a fire drill. But this doesn’t have to be the story. Kubernetes gives us tools, and AWS gives us signals, that let us design systems where Spot interruptions are a nuisance rather than a disaster. This article walks you through the practices.

By Ido Slonimsky
Tech Lead, Zesty

AWS RDS Optimization: Basics, Challenges, and Best Practices

October 01, 2024
5 MIN READ

AWS Relational Database Service (RDS) is a fundamental AWS service that simplifies the management of relational databases in the cloud by automating essential tasks such as backups, patch management, and scaling. Despite its conveniences, RDS presents challenges, particularly in terms of cost management, scaling, and sustained administration. To fully utilize the potential of AWS RDS, it’s crucial to optimize both performance and cost. Ensuring that your RDS instances operate efficiently not only enhances performance but also minimizes cloud waste. This blog will explore the fundamentals of AWS RDS, identify common challenges, and offer best practices for RDS optimization. Read on to learn more.

By Aviram Levy
Tech Evangelist

When should you use Spot Instances?

September 04, 2024
4 MIN READ

An honest look at saving money (without the surprises).

By Steven Moore
FinOps Specialist

EBS for Linux and Rocky: Review and walkthrough

September 03, 2024
5 MIN READ

When it comes to managing storage in AWS, Elastic Block Storage (EBS) is often the go-to solution, especially if you’re running Linux or Rocky Linux. It’s flexible, scalable, and generally reliable. However, like any tool, it has its quirks and potential pitfalls. In this guide, I’ll walk you through how to get EBS up and running on Linux and Rocky Linux, based on my own experience working with it—warts and all. Why EBS is a good fit for Linux and Rocky Linux (and where it might trip you up).

By Rachel Anderson
Cloud Engineer

Setting up AWS Instance Scheduler: A practical guide

August 29, 2024
4 MIN READ

As cloud engineers, we’re constantly balancing the need for performance with the ever-present goal of cost efficiency. AWS Instance Scheduler is a tool that can help with this balance by automating the start and stop times of your EC2 and RDS instances. It’s not a magic bullet, but when used correctly, it can help you manage resources more effectively. This guide is for those who want a straightforward, realistic look at how to get the most out of AWS Instance Scheduler.

By Steven Moore
FinOps Specialist