Dependabot for Cloud Costs

author image

Tim Nichols

CEO/Founder

2025-01-10T04:29:28.560Z

The Problem

Everybody knows their Kubernetes clusters are overprovisioned, so why aren’t they rightsized?

  • Optimization is complex. Requiring engineers to understand multiple (shared) layers of infrastructure and think like an SRE
  • Optimization is not something engineers enjoy. Engineers want to ship code and stay out of configs.
  • Autoscaling takes time to master. Picking the right autoscaler, deploying and tuning for every workload & cluster is a full-time job.
  • Vendors require invasive permissions to deploy recommendations and realize cost savings.

Using Flightcrew to reduce cloud costs

Working with Flightcrew

Flightcrew is an AI tool that can automate cloud cost management by analyzing and generating PRs. It's like dependabot!

  • Admins define SLOs, Policy and Preferences
  • Flightcrew monitors, forecasts and evaluates workloads and infrastructure
  • When workloads are failing, at-risk or wasteful … Flightcrew generates GitHub PRs with the correct configuration.
    • Pod, Node and Host Sizing
    • Resource Lifecycle
    • Pod and Node Autoscaling (including KEDA and Karpenter)
  • Engineers review and deploy Flightcrew recommendations through standard CI/CD processes

Why Flightcrew

  • Flightcrew automates configuration changes so that teams realize cost savings
  • Flightcrew surfaces configuration recommendations through native workflows and secure change management practices
  • Flightcrew makes infrastructure config understandable for every engineer through summaries, docs and chat

Results

Results

  • Save >40% in cloud costs from personalized pod, node and autoscaling recommendations, deployed through safe, GitOps workflows
  • Save >10% of engineering time by simplifying cloud resource management
  • Prevent incidents from OOMing, resource starvation and bullying