# Inactive Kubernetes Workload

Canonical: https://www.pointfive.co/efficiency-hub/inefficiencies/inactive-kubernetes-workload

[Cloud Efficiency Hub](https://www.pointfive.co/efficiency-hub) 

# Inactive Kubernetes Workload

## Explanation

Workloads with consistently low CPU and memory usage may no longer serve active traffic or scheduled tasks, but continue reserving resources within the cluster. These idle deployments often remain after project migrations, feature deprecations, or experimentation. Removing inactive workloads allows node groups to scale down, reducing infrastructure costs without impacting active services.

## Relevant Billing Model

EKS control planes are billed hourly, and compute resources (EC2 nodes or Fargate) are billed separately based on usage. Kubernetes workloads that reserve CPU and memory continue consuming node capacity, even if they are idle, driving unnecessary compute costs.

## Detection

- Identify Kubernetes workloads (Deployments, StatefulSets, DaemonSets, or CronJobs) with minimal CPU and memory usage over a representative time window

- Review service exposure, pod restart patterns, and ingress configurations to validate inactivity

- Assess workload labels, annotations, and namespaces to determine original ownership and purpose

- Check application monitoring or logs to verify that no meaningful interactions are occurring

- Confirm findings with application owners or service stakeholders before proceeding with removal

## Remediation

Delete workloads confirmed to be inactive to reclaim node capacity and reduce cluster size. Review associated Kubernetes resources such as Services, ConfigMaps, and Persistent Volume Claims to ensure complete cleanup. Incorporate tagging and lifecycle management practices to better track workload ownership and reduce future accumulation of unused resources.

## Relevant Documentation

- [Amazon EKS Documentation](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/eks/latest/userguide/what-is-eks.html/%22)

- Kubernetes Workloads Overview

[Submit Feedback](https://hub.pointfive.co/inefficiencies/inactive-kubernetes-workload)

## At a glance

Reference

CER-0004

Cloud provider

AWS

Service

AWS EKS

Category

[Compute](https://www.pointfive.co/efficiency-hub/service-category/compute)

Inefficiency type

Unused Resource

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Source: the public page above. Product screenshots and illustrative interfaces are examples, not live customer data.