Invisible Overhead

Kubernetes is now the go-to choice for running modern infrastructure. It’s flexible. It’s powerful. It scales like crazy.

But all that power hides a sneaky problem: cluster sprawl.

As teams grow, they spin up clusters left and right—each for a good reason at the time. But no one circles back to clean things up. Fast forward a few months and you’ve got dozens of clusters scattered across clouds, draining budgets and adding chaos.

What started as agility? Becomes a mess.

Let’s break down what causes sprawl, what it’s costing teams in real life, and how to stop it before it gets out of hand.

Where Sprawl Comes From

Cluster sprawl doesn’t hit you all at once. It builds up—cluster by cluster—from decisions that all feel reasonable in the moment:

• A team wants a dedicated cluster for a new app.
• A client needs isolation. Spin up another one.
• Devs move fast. Governance lags behind.
• CI/CD spins up infra but doesn’t tear it down.
• A new cloud region launches—so why not test it?

Before you know it? You’re juggling 20+ clusters. Some barely used. Others completely forgotten.

And it’s not just a money problem. Sprawl wrecks:

• Visibility – What’s running where?
• Security – Who has access to what?
• Team efficiency – Everyone’s solving the same problems in different places.

Let’s look at two companies that ran headfirst into this.

Case 1: The Unintentional Hoarder

Company A runs an e-commerce platform. They started with one Kubernetes cluster to handle peak season traffic.

A year later? 16 clusters across 3 clouds. Over 100 pods per cluster. No shared policies. No cleanup scripts. Just chaos.

Their cloud bill? $150,000/month. And that’s when someone finally asked: “Do we need all of this?”

Turns out:

• 40% of pods weren’t doing anything
• No resource limits—just default settings
• Autoscaling? Missing or misconfigured

A basic audit script kicked off the cleanup:

kubectl get pods --all-namespaces --field-selector=status.phase=Running \
  -o custom-columns='NAME:.metadata.name,CPU:.spec.containers[*].resources.requests.cpu'

They added resource limits. Killed off zombie clusters. Just that alone saved $60,000/month.

Takeaway: If no one’s watching, things pile up. Even simple guardrails can save serious cash.

Case 2: The Pipeline Overbuilder

Company B was scaling fast after landing a big client. Their lead engineer had a bright idea: create a separate cluster for every deployment stage of every service.

It sounded smart. Until they had 42 clusters. Most doing the same thing. None monitored. Latency everywhere.

The bill? $120,000/month. Teams were frustrated. Nothing was standardized.

Their fix?

• Moved to a multi-tenant model using namespaces
• Managed everything with GitOps and Terraform
• Reused infra instead of cloning it

Here’s what one of their namespace configs looked like:

resource "kubernetes_namespace" "dev" {
  metadata {
    name = "development"
  }

  lifecycle {
    prevent_destroy = true
  }
}

Result: they went from 42 to 10 clusters. Isolation stayed. Costs dropped. They saved $700,000+ a year.

Takeaway: You don’t need a cluster per team or app. Kubernetes namespaces do the job—without the sprawl.

How to Get Sprawl Under Control

You don’t need to rebuild your infra. But you do need a plan.

1. Start with Visibility

• Use cost tools like Kubecost or CloudHealth
• Run resource audits with kubectl or Prometheus
• Ask: Do we really need this many clusters?

2. Consolidate Using Namespaces

Namespaces give you logical isolation without spinning up whole clusters. Easier to manage. Less expensive to run.

3. Define Governance Rules

• Decide who can create clusters—and when
• Standardize CI/CD templates
• Auto-delete short-lived environments

4. Automate with GitOps + IaC

• Use Terraform, Helm, or Crossplane
• Keep infra changes tracked in Git
• Make your setup repeatable and reviewable

5. Centralize Observability

• Monitor everything in one place: Prometheus, Grafana, Loki
• Fewer blind spots. Fewer surprises.

Tooling Snapshot

Here’s a quick view of the tools mentioned above:

Last Word

Cluster sprawl doesn’t come from bad intentions. It comes from speed and freedom—without guardrails.

But cleanup isn’t about slowing down. It’s about building smarter.

So take stock. Clean house. Keep what works. Scrap what doesn’t.

And next time someone wants a new cluster? Ask why—and if a namespace will do.