Karpenter's consolidation behaviour is counter-intuitive
Summary
The post analyzes Karpenter's node consolidation as counter-intuitive because consolidation is driven by global cluster state rather than local node fullness. It uses a detailed workload scenario to show how consolidation can cause constant node churn, explain why there is no tunable threshold for consolidation, and discuss potential fixes and design considerations to mitigate emergent, undesirable behavior.