The Cast AI blog
Guides, tutorials, and tips on Kubernetes automation, from cost optimization to cloud security and everything in between.

Automated, Autonomous, Agentic: What the Three Levels of Kubernetes Operations Actually Mean
Automation, autonomy, and agentic operations are not interchangeable. This post breaks down the four levels…

The FOCUS Specification for Kubernetes and AI Costs, Explained
FOCUS 1.4 standardizes cloud billing data across providers and improves Kubernetes cost visibility, but does…

Kubernetes Chargeback and Showback: How to Bill Teams for What They Actually Use
Kubernetes chargeback only works when teams trust the numbers behind the bill. This guide explains…

Kubernetes Capacity Planning: How to Size a Cluster You Cannot Predict
Effective Kubernetes capacity planning starts with actual resource usage, not inflated CPU requests. This guide…

SaaS, Self-Hosted or Air-Gapped: Choosing a Deployment Model for Kubernetes Optimization
The deployment model question comes before the feature comparison. This guide covers what data each…

Karpenter Is Free. Here’s What You Actually Pay For at Scale
Karpenter has no license fee, but running it at scale can require significant engineering overhead.…

The Karpenter Ecosystem: Which Tools Extend Karpenter, and What Each Adds
Karpenter provisions nodes well, but production Kubernetes also needs workload rightsizing, cost allocation, multi-cluster policy,…

Open-Source Karpenter Limitations: What the Gaps Are at Enterprise Scale
Karpenter provisions nodes efficiently but has six documented limitations at enterprise scale: no workload rightsizing…

Karpenter Is Running but Costs Haven’t Dropped: A Diagnostic Checklist
Karpenter may not reduce costs as expected due to oversized requests, narrow NodePools, disabled consolidation,…