Proactively Enforce Cost Controls with Policy as Code
Kubernetes is a powerful, dynamically scalable container orchestration platform. However, it can be inefficient and costly if not managed properly. Overprovisioning, caused by uncontrolled resource allocation, is a common issue that inflates costs. What’s more, poorly designed Kubernetes deployments can overburden IT resources.
By taking a cost-saving approach to resource management in Kubernetes, you can optimize your deployments to run more efficiently. Here’s how:
- Enforce resource limits: Nirmata Policy Manager lets you define policies that set maximum resource requests and limits for pods and deployments. This prevents applications from consuming more CPU, memory, or other resources than needed, preventing over-allocation and associated costs.
- Prevent expensive resource usage: You can create policies to restrict the creation of resource-intensive deployments. For example, Nirmata Policy Manager can block deployments requesting large persistent volumes of potentially costly resources.
- Optimize resources: Nirmata Policy Manager can implement policies for automatic cleanup of unused or underutilized resources. You can identify deployments or pods based on labels, age, or resource consumption and initiate deletion, freeing up resources and reducing costs.
- Allocate Costs with OpenCost: Nirmata Policy Manager integrates with OpenCost, a cost-allocation tool for Kubernetes. You can define cost allocation rules based on labels, annotations, or resource usage. Nirmata Policy Manager enforces these policies, ensuring costs are attributed to the appropriate teams or projects.
- Monitor resource efficiency: While Nirmata Policy Manager doesn’t directly monitor resource usage, it can enforce policies based on metrics provided by external tools. This lets you define policies that trigger actions (such as scaling down deployments) based on resource consumption thresholds.
Business Benefits
To manage Kubernetes resources efficiently, Nirmata Policy Manager enforces limits on deployments and pods. This ensures that applications stay within their designated resource allocations, resulting in higher application performance, improved resource utilization, and lower costs – especially in large deployments.
With Nirmata you can:
- Enforce resource limits on deployments, preventing over-allocation and wasted budget.
- Block resource-intensive deployments such as those requesting large, persistent volumes.
- Automate the cleanup of unused resources based on labels, age, or resource consumption.
- Integrate with OpenCost to enforce cost allocation rules for teams or projects.
- Work with external monitoring tools to trigger actions based on resource usage.
