We Migrated to Karpenter and Our Costs Went Up: A Journey to Real Savings by Abhinav Dahiya

Abhinav Dahiya tells the honest story of migrating to Karpenter, the Kubernetes node autoscaler, and what actually happened to his team's cloud costs. In this talk, Abhinav walks through the initial promise of Karpenter, the reality check when costs went up instead of down, and the journey his team took to uncover what was really driving spend. He shares the lessons learned, the configuration changes that made the difference, and how they eventually got to real savings. If you are managing Kubernetes workloads, optimizing cloud costs, or considering Karpenter for your cluster, this talk offers a candid, real-world perspective on what to expect and how to make it work for your environment. Recorded live at Kubernetes Community Days Texas on May 15, 2026, at the TCEA Conference Center in Austin, Texas. Kubernetes Community Days Texas is a community driven CNCF event focused on learning, collaboration, and open source connection across the cloud native ecosystem. Thank you to our sponsors for making this event possible: https://community2.cncf.io/events/det... Learn more about KCD Texas: https://kcdtexas.org Follow KCD Texas: @KCDTexas