Amazon EKS — Cost Optimization Strategies
Advanced Cost Optimization
Beyond the basics — strategies for large-scale EKS cost management.
Cost Visibility
| Tool | What It Shows |
|---|---|
| AWS Cost Explorer | Overall AWS spending |
| Kubecost | Per-pod, per-namespace, per-team cost |
| CloudWatch | Resource utilization trends |
| AWS Budgets | Alerts when spending exceeds thresholds |
Optimization Framework
Cost Optimization Priority
┌──────────────────────────────────────┐
│ │
│ 1. Right-size (biggest impact) │
│ └── VPA recommendations │
│ └── Review resource requests │
│ │
│ 2. Pricing (next biggest) │
│ └── Spot for stateless │
│ └── Savings Plans for baseline │
│ └── Graviton (ARM) instances │
│ │
│ 3. Scheduling │
│ └── Turn off dev/staging nights │
│ └── Scale to zero unused services│
│ │
│ 4. Architecture │
│ └── Fargate for bursty jobs │
│ └── S3 instead of EBS where OK │
│ └── Single NAT Gateway per AZ │
│ │
└──────────────────────────────────────┘
Quick Wins
| Action | Estimated Savings | Effort |
|---|---|---|
| Right-size over-provisioned pods | 20-40% | 1 day |
| Spot for non-critical workloads | 60-90% on those workloads | 2 days |
| KEDA cron to shutdown dev at night | 60% on dev environments | 1 hour |
| Karpenter consolidation | 20-30% | 2 hours |
| Graviton instances | 20% | 1 day |
What’s Next?
Prove your skills: Certification Paths.
