Making Kubernetes Work For You: The Challenges in Cost Saving.

For many of our clients, Kubernetes is a must-have technology. Almost every large organisation is using it in some way, whether just at the PoC level or in production. The drive towards containers is old news, but the challenges involved in adopting containerisation at scale remain a key topic of conversation. 

According to a survey by Computing Research of over 1000 IT leaders from across the UK, 75% of UK IT leaders said cost optimisation was a priority for 2023. So naturally, people are looking to maximise the value (and minimise the costs) of Kubernetes adoption. However, the complexity and skills gap often cited as key challenges can prove off-putting to cost-conscious IT leaders. To counter this, the key is to look at ways to jumpstart Kubernetes’ value and use it as a way to realise cost benefits quickly.

While there’s of course an upfront investment required for adopting any new technology, Kubernetes can be a great tool for optimising costs if implemented well.

It can enable efficient resource utilisation through its intelligent container scheduling and autoscaling. Configuring this properly is no mean feat, requiring careful use of metrics and strong observability, but can mean less spend on cloud instances.

Kubernetes can yield cost efficiency less directly as well. It enables a consistent operating model across all workloads, and can be combined with a GitOps deployment model for managing every resource inside your cluster. This simplifies and accelerates CI/CD, meaning developers and platform engineers alike can spend more time on other things. This is especially true when using cloud provider-managed Kubernetes distributions, and making the best use of the open source, Kubernetes-native tools available.

Achieving meaningful gains from these cost-saving benefits, though, can end up coming at a very high price – too often, teams get mired in the complexity and struggle to settle on tooling and implementation. This is compounded by the often-cited skills challenge, with experienced Kubernetes engineers in high demand. 59% of respondents to a survey by The Register who have looked to hire such talent said it was harder than expected to find employees who understand Kubernetes, with 26% overall citing skills shortages as a blocker to adopting it for production workloads. If this resonates with you and your challenges, take a look at our article on the skills challenge next. 

That said, working through those challenges can add the value you need to bring cost efficiency to your project. That same study cited that of those who have adopted Kubernetes, over a quarter of users did so because it was the most cost-effective solution to their needs. Finding the balance between using it in the right places and maximising efficiency is key. 

Fortunately, these challenges can be overcome with the right help and resources. Exploiting the right tools from the right vendors (and avoiding reinventing the wheel) can greatly ease and accelerate Kubernetes adoption. A lot of guidance and expertise can be gleaned from the likes of AWS – following best practice and well-architected principles which have been carefully developed from experience. The right partners can help with making decisions and ensuring that Kubernetes provides meaningful value with minimal, manageable complexity. 

Kubernetes is the de facto standard for running modern applications at scale. Automation Logic have been helping organisations unlock the benefits of Kubernetes since 2018. With their latest accelerators and guidance built on this experience, rapidly deploying best practice container platforms at scale has never been easier.

If you want to start realising the benefits then get in touch with us to see if we can help – email info@automation logic.com.