Cut costs, scale smarter with ROSA: Karpenter automates compute provisioning

This article explains how Red Hat build of Karpenter improves compute efficiency and reduces costs for Red Hat OpenShift Service on AWS (ROSA) clusters through intelligent node autoscaling.

• Karpenter provisions right-sized EC2 instances just-in-time based on actual workload requirements
• Solves traditional autoscaler limitations: rigid node groups, reactive scaling, over-provisioning, bin-packing inefficiency
• Evaluates 400+ EC2 instance types across architectures, capacity types, and availability zones
• Continuously consolidates underutilized nodes for ongoing optimization
• Hosted control plane controllers eliminate extra pods and compute overhead
• Can coexist with Cluster Autoscaler for gradual migration paths
• Supports capacity reservations, Spot instances, and Arm-based Graviton instances
• Integrates with security compliance: FIPS, SOC2, FedRAMP, IAM, and STS
• Generally available in next OpenShift minor release across all ROSA regions

Karpenter automates node scaling to deliver significant cost savings, operational efficiency, and sustainability improvements for ROSA clusters.