Can Containers & Kubernetes Save Me Money?
Kubernetes has become immensely popular as the go-to platform for scaling containerized applications in recent years. But did you know Kubernetes and Containerization can help you save real money, and lots of it?
…did you know Kubernetes and Containerization can also help you save real money, and lots of it?
Yes, that’s right!
In this article, we’ll detail the business and technical ways migrating to Containerized Apps on an Orchestration Platform like Kubernetes can save you countless dollars and a whole lot more.
Business Cost Savings
Let’s begin with an simple overview of three business advantages:
Technology-Based Cost Savings
And four significant cost-saving features of a Kubernetes platform:
Multi-Tenancy
The general idea behind “multi-tenancy” is to run more applications on fewer servers by sharing hardware. The difficulty has always been, preventing applications from interfering with each other on shared hardware.
The birth of virtual machine technology brought about complete workload isolation and allowed applications to coexist on shared hardware. Each virtual machine runs its own operating system and applications within it. But virtual machines and the individual operating systems they run, consume considerable resources at scale. They also, increase administrative burden due to configurations being tied to each virtual machine independently. Additionally, “server drift” is common place, causing many operational issues and increasing expenses.
The general idea behind multi-tenancy is to run more applications on fewer servers…
Containers, on the other hand, provide “workload isolation” by design. They package applications into discrete binary containers, together with the exact versions of libraries, frameworks and interpreters needed by a particular application. Multiple containers can run on one shared operating system in complete isolation, thereby using fewer resources than their Virtual Machine counterparts.
All configuration is centralised on separate hardware know as the ‘Control Plane’, instead of 10s, 100s, 1000s of separate virtual machines, reducing administrative complexity.
Figure 1. Multi-Tenancy
Kubernetes was created to run containers at scale and as such, one of its defining characteristics is its exceptionally robust and granular workload isolation capabilities. With Kubernetes, multiple product team environments (tenants) run applications on a cluster of servers independently from one another, making resource sharing on the same hardware safer, easier and more efficient then ever before – without the use of bloated virtual machines.
Over-Provision Reduction
Over-provisioning is where more computing power is allocated to applications then they usually need, just in case they may need it during peak times. This practice creates large amounts of waste which, when multiplied by dozens, hundreds or even thousands of servers, can quickly burn through $$$Â cash.
With multi-tenant Kubernetes, organizations significantly reduce costs, using only the resources they need.
Additionally, minimizing over-provisioning reduces energy consumption and your companies carbon footprint.
Autoscaling
Capacity management undertakings such as autoscaling, ensure your services can meet client demands while still saving you money.
Put simply, Kubernetes can automatically add new servers to it’s cluster (known as nodes) and boost computing power during peak demand. After demand subsides, Kubernetes can automatically scale down and remove any unused nodes, thus saving you money.
Figure 2. AutoscalingÂ
Image by Microsoft – Scaling options for applications in Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)
Self-Healing
As a bonus, Kubernetes possesses advanced self-healing capabilities which detect and automatically, restart any failed pods.
Besides Pod Self-Healing, Kubernetes can detect and quarantine any failed node servers within your cluster and automatically move all your applications to a new node.
No need for lengthy interventions by engineers and support personnel…
Often, by the time monitoring and altering mechanisms recognize a fault, the problem has been accounted for and service levels are back to peak operational performance without any loss of service.
Figure 3. Kubernetes Self-Healing
No need for lengthy interventions by engineers and support personnel; once again saving you time and money.
Reducing Man Hours
Figure 4. Reducing Man-Hours
Image by smashinghub.com – how to handle repetitive and time consuming tasks
It is important to note that a significant portion of a company’s operating expenses are attributed to “man hours” – that’s you and me and the work we carry out each day.
Delays in projects can be expensive with loss of client business a real concern. Kubernetes makes it possible to greatly streamline workflows by automating repetitive tasks. Building, testing, deploying new application releases and configuring clusters that used to take months can now be accomplished in hours.
All this frees up your teams to focus on core business activities and supplying revenue generating services to your clients.
Swift Time-To-Market
An Orchestration Platform like Kubernetes reduces product time-to-market by automating application deployment and management, greatly minimizing operational overhead. This efficiency enables quicker market response.
Client-Centric Updates
By delivering desirable product features to customers quickly, you gain a competitive advantage, all the while, reducing costs from delays and bottlenecks associated with typical product release cycles.
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…rapid product evolution through continuous, incremental change…
With microservices adoption, you gain further agility to release new product features daily and even several times a day—without any downtime!
Forget those nerve recking weekend releases every 3 – 6 months and say hello to daily, weekly and even continuous, incremental release!
The Numbers
A recent Sysdig analysis found that most organizations can reduce wasted Kubernetes resources by an average of 40%. But this really is very subjective and your milage may vary.
What we have found is that having the right cost-management tooling and cluster strategy in place, can lead to considerable cost savings each month.Â
Conclusion
Firstly, lets recap; Kubernetes and Containerization do save you money!
Secondly, adopting a Container-first migration approach to modernization is not a trivial journey with many organizational and technological milestones along the way. However, as a wise man once said, “The longest journey begins with the first steps“.
Enlist a senior consultant or partner who will help you navigate the challenges on your road to success.
…can you really afford to be left behind?
Lastly, if you’re a technology leader reading this, you might be thinking, ”all this sounds great but also sounds like a lot of work”. Dependent on the scale and complexity of your operations, you might be right. But consider for a moment that change is often uncomfortable and this alone should not be a reason not to future proof your I.T. and modernise.
If your competitors are modernising, can you really afford to be left behind?
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Tony Barganski is a Principal Consultant at a tech consultancy in London, where he focuses on meeting the cloud computing needs of London’s financial institutions. Tony consistently delivers impactful solutions and has played a pivotal role in driving business advancements for his clients.
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