{"id":7043,"date":"2022-01-26T23:43:06","date_gmt":"2022-01-26T23:43:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mailinvest.blog\/index.php\/2022\/01\/26\/how-open-source-kubecost-is-eliminating-container-overspend\/"},"modified":"2022-01-26T23:43:06","modified_gmt":"2022-01-26T23:43:06","slug":"how-open-source-kubecost-is-eliminating-container-overspend","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mailinvest.blog\/index.php\/2022\/01\/26\/how-open-source-kubecost-is-eliminating-container-overspend\/","title":{"rendered":"How open-source Kubecost is eliminating container overspend"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a>\n
<\/p>\n

\n

Explaining cloud computing is simple<\/a>. Managing distributed applications and services for an enterprise-scale company isn\u2019t. This is why the tidal wave of cloud adoption that broke across industry in the COVID pandemic has brought a companion surge of Kubernetes into mainstream enterprise information technology.<\/p>\n

Kubernetes is excellent at managing containerized workloads and services, enabling faster time to market, scalability and improved agility for DevOps teams. But one thing it isn\u2019t great at is providing visibility into what is happening within a company\u2019s systems. This means that Kubernetes-related inefficiencies often go overlooked, resulting in wasted spend<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cContainers are very dynamic; they\u2019re often complex, often transient, and consume variable cluster resources,\u201d said\u00a0Alex Thilen<\/a> (pictured, right), head of business development at Kubecost (from Stackwatch, Inc.). \u201cAnd so, as much as this enables teams to construct powerful solutions, the associated costs and actually tracking those different variables can be really difficult.\u201d<\/p>\n

Thilen and Webb Brown<\/a> (pictured, left), chief executive officer at Kubecost, spoke with\u00a0John Furrier<\/a>, host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media\u2019s livestreaming studio, during the <\/span>AWS Startup Showcase: Open Cloud Innovations<\/span><\/a> event.<\/span>\u00a0They discussed container cost management<\/a>. (* Disclosure below.)<\/em><\/p>\n

Kubecost knows what\u2019s happening inside even the biggest clusters<\/h3>\n

\u201cIf you think you know what\u2019s happening in your cluster, forget it,\u201d reads commandment number six of\u00a0The 10 Kube Commandments<\/a> as presented by software engineers Bryan Liles<\/a> and Carlos Amedee<\/a> in 2019. But earlier that same year, a group of Google engineers launched the Kubecost project<\/a> in order to make that commandment obsolete.<\/p>\n

Kubecost\u2019s name is as straightforward and transparent as its mission: Kubecost provides cost monitoring and management solutions for Kubernetes and cloud-native applications. The original open-source project became the foundation for Stackwatch\u2019s Kubecost solution, which is now giving thousands of DevOps teams visibility into their Kubernetes spend.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s really about, first and foremost, just getting the visibility, getting the eyes and ears. We\u2019re able to give that to teams in real time at the largest scale Kubernetes clusters in the world,\u201d Brown said.<\/p>\n

But do DevOps teams really need another monitoring tool? Yes, according to Webb, because the way that software is being architected, deployed and managed is fundamentally changing with Kubernetes, and this is putting engineers in charge of making cost-impacting decisions.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re moving from this world where you can make real-time automated decisions or manual decisions, as opposed to waiting for a bill a day, two days, or a week later, when it may be already too late to avoid this,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cOlder traditional cloud cost optimization tools are just not as fit for this space,\u201d Thilen stated. \u201cA solution like Kubecost that\u2019s purpose-built for developers using Kubernetes is really necessary.\u201d<\/p>\n

The sheer number of organizations the company sees using Kubernetes at massive scale is mind-blowing, according to Brown, who explained how, with billions of dollars now being spent on Kubernetes, the scale of the adoption is making the issue of wasted resources a business-critical question in many organizations.<\/p>\n

As teams start using a visibility solution like Kubecost, there is a natural pattern where they start with \u201ceither limited or no visibility, get that visibility in place, and then really develop an action plan from there,\u201d Brown said.<\/p>\n

This action plan can involve governance solutions such as alerts or management reports or engineering team reports, but the most important factor is that teams are getting a baseline of highly accurate visibility into their Kubernetes spend and taking action on it, according to Brown. Ultimately, the goal would be to automate the process, but this will only occur after a team is comfortable making potentially critical performance decisions within their infrastructure.<\/p>\n

Being open source is part of Kubecost\u2019s DNA<\/h3>\n

Stackwatch\u2019s Kubecost maintains its open-source core and can be deployed with a single Helm install.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn minutes you\u2019ll have this visibility and can start to see really interesting metrics that most teams when we start working with them either didn\u2019t have them in place at all or they had a really rough estimate,\u201d Brown said.<\/p>\n

The solution sits inside a company\u2019s infrastructure, which allows it to monitor in real time and has the added benefit that data doesn\u2019t have to be shared remotely. Integrations link to custom pricing and actual billing data, whether on-premises or in a public cloud, to provide real-time reporting on the cost of any dimension of the monitored Kubernetes infrastructure.<\/p>\n

Kubecost has partnered with existing continuous integration\/continuous development tool providers, such as Armory Inc.\u2019s Spinnaker <\/a>, to help customers deploy the insights they get from Kubecost more efficiently. A partnership with Grafana Labs AB<\/a> enables customers to more easily visualize the data provided by Kubecost and to integrate it with Kubernetes management platforms such as D2iQ<\/a> or Rancher<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe really want to surface this and make costs more of a first-class citizen across the ecosystem and the community partners,\u201d Thilen stated.<\/p>\n

This means working with both commercial and open-source companies.<\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of the biz-dev strategy is just sticking to our roots and making sure that we continue to drive a strong open-source presence and product for our community of users,\u201d Thilen added.<\/p>\n

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE\u2019s and theCUBE\u2019s coverage of the <\/span>AWS Startup Showcase: Open Cloud Innovations<\/span><\/a> event.<\/span> (* Disclosure: Kubecost (from Stackwatch Inc.) sponsored this segment of theCUBE. Neither Kubecost nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n