Karpenter
Karpenter is an open-source, high-performance Kubernetes cluster autoscaler developed by AWS. It automatically provisions and manages compute resources (nodes) in Kubernetes clusters based on pod requirements, optimizing for cost, performance, and availability. Unlike traditional autoscalers, it can launch diverse instance types and sizes to better match workload needs.
Developers should use Karpenter when running Kubernetes workloads on AWS to reduce operational overhead and costs by automating node provisioning and scaling. It's particularly valuable for dynamic workloads with varying resource demands, such as batch processing, CI/CD pipelines, or microservices with spiky traffic, as it quickly responds to pod scheduling failures and selects optimal EC2 instances.