Skip to main content

PREQUEL-2025-0105

Karpenter NodePool budget exceeded; Pods cannot be scheduledMedium
Impact: 7/10
Mitigation: 5/10

PREQUEL-2025-0105View on GitHub

Description

Karpenter is used to automatically provision Kubernetes nodes. NodePools can define a

maximum budget for total resource usage to prevent unexpectedly expensive cloud bills.

When the budget is reached, Karpenter will stop provisioning new nodes and new pods will

fail to schedule.


Cause

  • Configured NodePool budget has been reached
  • Rapid workload growth or unexpected scale events consuming budgeted capacity
  • Budget thresholds for the NodePool are misconfigured or too low

Mitigation

  • Review NodePool budget configuration and current spend/utilization
  • Increase the NodePool budget or temporarily relax constraints to restore capacity
  • Reduce workload demand or optimize resource requests/limits
  • Consider separate NodePools for critical workloads with higher budgets

References