https://panditha.com/tags/knative/ Recent content in Knative on Panditha Hugo en Mon, 09 Mar 2026 09:53:20 +1100 https://panditha.com/posts/knative-serve-scale-to-zero/ Mon, 09 Mar 2026 09:53:20 +1100 https://panditha.com/posts/knative-serve-scale-to-zero/ <p><a href="https://knative.dev/docs/serving/">Knative Serving</a> provides a simple way to run HTTP workloads on Kubernetes that automatically scale based on traffic. One of the most useful capabilities is scale to zero. When a service receives no traffic, the pods disappear completely. When a request arrives, Knative starts the workload again and routes the request to it.</p> <h2 id="motivation">Motivation</h2> <p>Recently, I discussed this problem with a friend who hosts many small client services on a public cloud platform. These services are used infrequently, some only a few times per month, yet they incur continuous hosting charges. He wanted to reduce costs without sacrificing flexibility. Moving everything back to on-premises hardware seemed like an option, but it would sacrifice the ability to scale globally or easily migrate back to the cloud. Knative with scale-to-zero offers a middle ground: run a small platform at home, host services that consume resources only when actually invoked, and maintain the option to move workloads back to public cloud infrastructure if needs change. For anyone managing many lightweight internal services, especially those used infrequently, this pattern can dramatically reduce infrastructure costs while preserving operational flexibility.</p>