How a Global Fortune 500 Insurance Company Reduced Kubernetes Costs by 70% with vCluster’s Sleep Mode

200 Kubernetes Clusters Consuming Resources 24/7

Before implementing vCluster, the global Fortune 500 insurance company was managing over 200 Kubernetes clusters in its Dev & Test environments. These clusters remained active even during idle periods, leading to high cloud computing costs—especially for compute resources that were not fully utilized.

The company faced a major challenge in controlling these costs while maintaining the ability to provide developers with the resources they needed for testing and development. Manual scaling was time-consuming and inefficient, making it difficult to optimize the use of compute resources.

‍Challenges

• High cloud costs from underutilized Kubernetes clusters
• Inefficient manual scaling of resources
• No automated way to reduce costs during idle periods

Sleep Mode for Pre-Production Workloads

After evaluating multiple solutions, the company adopted vCluster’s Enterprise features to address their cost management challenges. By implementing Sleep Mode, they were able to automatically turn off resources when not in use and wake them up only when a developer needed access. This allowed the company to:

• Add virtual clusters to each of their 200 Kubernetes clusters.
• Move workloads into virtual clusters and enable Sleep Mode.
• Automatically save on cloud costs by reducing idle compute resources.

With vCluster, the company saw a dramatic reduction in Kubernetes costs by 65-75% during their POC, resulting in a potential $6 million annual savings if deployed across the entire Dev & Test fleet.

‍Advantages

Self-service virtual clusters that automatically scale down during idle periods

• Significant reduction in cloud costs through automation
• No impact on developer workflows, with instant wake-up for active use
• Seamless management of 200 clusters with virtual cluster architecture

Cost Optimization with Enterprise Features

vCluster’s Sleep Mode, Auto Wakeup, and Auto Delete features provided the global insurance company with the ideal solution to manage Kubernetes costs for pre-production environments. Developers could focus on their work without worrying about infrastructure, and the company could confidently control its cloud expenditure.

vCluster empowered the platform team to reduce operational costs significantly while maintaining a high-performance, automated environment for development and testing workloads.