6 min
Karpenter vs Cluster Autoscaler: EKS Node Cost Optimization in 2026
Karpenter vs Cluster Autoscaler on EKS: consolidation + flexible NodePools beat half-empty ASG nodes. July 2026: karpenter.sh/v1, WhenEmptyOrUnderutilized, Spot mix checklist.
Ecommerce Growth & Retail Marketplaces
Kevin W.
- Published articles
- 69
Articles (69) — Page 5
9 min
AWS Bill Teardown #1: The SaaS Startup Paying $40k/Month for $8k of Workloads
Anonymized Series A SaaS bill: ~$40k/month for ~$8 to 9k of real work. July 2026 refresh: free S3/DynamoDB gateway endpoints, EBS zombies, RDS rightsizing, Trusted Advisor on Business Support+.
11 min
AWS Bill Teardown #2: How a Healthcare Company Spent $200k/Year on NAT Gateways
A healthcare estate was burning ~$200k/year on NAT. July 2026 refresh: NAT still ~$0.045/GB, free S3 gateway endpoints, Secrets Manager interface endpoints, and a VPC fix pattern that cut ~78%.
11 min
Autoscaling Broke Your Budget (AI Made It Worse)
Autoscaling was supposed to make costs predictable by matching capacity to demand. Instead, it introduced feedback loops, burst amplification, and, with AI workloads, a new class of non-deterministic spend that no scaling policy anticipates.
11 min
Logging Yourself Into Bankruptcy
Observability has a cost, and the industry has collectively underpriced it. CloudWatch log ingestion, metrics explosion, and X-Ray trace volume can together exceed your compute bill, especially once AI workloads introduce high-cardinality telemetry at scale.
17 min
Cost Control Is Architecture, Not Discounts
Savings Plans and Reserved Instances reduce the rate you pay. Architecture determines the volume you pay at. The most durable cost reductions in AWS come from designing systems that generate less spend, and negotiating a lower price for the same behavior does not achieve that.
12 min
AWS Cost Prediction in 2026: The Playbook for Accurate Forecasting
Most AWS cost forecasts miss by 30 to 50% because the forecasting model does not match how AWS charges. This playbook covers which metrics to measure, which models to use, and where the structural gaps are.
12 min
Designing AWS Architectures with Predictable, Stable Costs
Cost-stable AWS design: bounded per-event spend, queues as shock absorbers, hard ceilings. July 2026 refresh with FinOps Agent / anomaly detection hooks.
10 min
Data Transfer: The Line Item That Breaks Startups
Data transfer is the most consistently underestimated cost in AWS architectures. It does not appear in compute estimates, does not scale linearly, and punishes microservices designs just when growth feels like success.
13 min
How to Eliminate AWS Surprise Bills From Autoscaling
Autoscaling surprise bills are pattern-shaped: asymmetric thresholds, bad metrics, Lambda duration, Spot storms. July 2026 refresh: target tracking, Budget Actions, FinOps Agent.
9 min
Engineering Without Cost Ownership
AWS cost problems grow undetected for organizational reasons. Engineers make architectural decisions with no cost feedback. Finance sees bills 30 days late. No one owns the gap between the two.
8 min
AWS Pricing Is Not Transparent — It's Emergent Behavior
AWS publishes every price publicly, yet bills still surprise teams in 2026. Costs emerge from service interactions, now including Bedrock/AgentCore, so no single rate card shows the total.
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