Outcome
By the end of this lesson, you will be able to navigate the parent-child hierarchy in the resource list and drill from a cluster to its individual child workloads in three or fewer clicks.
| Tier | Operator |
| JTBD | ”Find a specific K8s CronJob nested under a cluster’s nodegroup.” |
| Personas | Platform Engineer |
| Prerequisites | L1 |
| Time | 10 minutes |
| Bloom verb | Navigate (Apply) |
1. Concept
Cloud resources come in nests, not in a flat list.
A Kubernetes cluster holds groups of machines, and those groups hold the machines themselves. The same cluster separately holds the applications running on it. An Azure Databricks workspace holds clusters, instance pools and SQL warehouses. An ECS cluster holds services, and each service holds the tasks doing the work.
ZopNight works out which things belong to which, and lets you navigate down through them. Throughout this lesson, a parent is the thing that contains, and a child is what it contains.
The hierarchy model
TOP-LEVEL PARENT CHILDREN (one level down)─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────EKS / GKE / AKS cluster → Nodegroup, Deployment, STS, CronJobECS cluster → Service, Task definition, Container instanceDatabricks Workspace → Cluster, Instance Pool, SQL WarehouseECR repository → ImageArtifact Registry repository → ImageCloudWatch → Log GroupRDS instance → Read replica (if any)ASG → Instance, Scheduled actionSome hierarchies go three levels deep:
LEVEL 1 LEVEL 2 LEVEL 3─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────EKS cluster → Nodegroup → EC2 instanceGKE cluster → Node pool → GCE instanceAKS cluster → Node pool → Azure VMThe default Resources view shows parents only. Each parent carries a child count badge. Clicking the badge or the parent itself drills into the children.
The default view
RESOURCES → Parents view (default)
NAME TYPE CHILDREN STATUS─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────prod-eks-cluster eks 3 child → Runningstaging-databricks-ws databricks 12 child → Runningprod-ecr-payments ecr 847 child → -prod-rds-payments rds 1 read replica → Availablebuild-asg-x86 asg 8 instances → RunningThat count is a link. Click “3 child” on prod-eks-cluster and the page becomes that cluster’s contents: its machine groups and its workloads, and nothing from anywhere else.
Breadcrumbs and scope
When viewing children, a breadcrumb shows the path:
Resources > prod-eks-cluster > Nodegroup: gp-nodes-1 > Instances
Each segment is clickable. Click "prod-eks-cluster" to return to its children.Click "Resources" to return to the all-parents view.Nothing is a dead end. Three levels down, you can step back one at a time or jump straight to the top.
Filters narrow per scope
Filters describe where you are, not the whole estate. Inside prod-eks-cluster, the Type filter offers only the four kinds of thing that cluster actually contains, rather than all 380. You are never scrolling past types that cannot appear here.
Search overrides scope
Search is the exception. It looks across the whole estate and returns matches whatever they belong to, which is what you want when you know the name and have forgotten where it lives.
Why parent-child matters for scheduling
Kubernetes workloads are scheduled one child at a time, never a whole cluster at once. To stop one scheduled job outside working hours, you go:
Resources → prod-eks-cluster → cronjob-daily-report → Attach ScheduleStopping the whole cluster would take the production applications down with it, which is almost never what anybody meant. Navigating into the child first makes the smaller, correct action the obvious one.
The same applies to Databricks. A team can schedule individual Databricks clusters or SQL warehouses off-hours without affecting other workspace components.
Why parent-child matters for cost
Cost attribution rolls up the hierarchy. A nodegroup’s cost is the sum of its instances. A cluster’s cost is the sum of its nodegroups. The Resources page shows the rolled-up monthly cost on the parent row and the per-child cost when drilled into the children.
prod-eks-cluster Monthly: $14,300 └── gp-nodes-1 (nodegroup) Monthly: $11,400 └── i-0abc1 (instance) Monthly: $722 └── i-0abc2 (instance) Monthly: $722 └──... └── memory-nodes (nodegroup) Monthly: $2,900 └── i-0xyz1 (instance) Monthly: $972 └──... └── cronjob-daily-report Monthly: included in nodegroupThe scheduled job has no compute cost of its own, because it runs on machines the group is already paying for. It still appears here, because you need somewhere to schedule it and something to point at when you talk about it.
2. Demo
A typical navigation path:
SCENARIO: Find and schedule a specific CronJob to zero off-hours
T+0 Open Resources page (Parents view)T+5 s Find "prod-eks-cluster" with "12 child →" badgeT+8 s Click "12 child →" Breadcrumb: Resources > prod-eks-cluster View: 12 children (4 nodegroups, 6 Deployments, 1 STS, 1 CronJob)T+12 s Filter Type=CronJob, search "report" View narrowed to 1 CronJob: cronjob-daily-reportT+15 s Click the CronJob row Detail page opens: shows resource UID, parent cluster, current schedule, costT+18 s Click "Attach Schedule" → schedule selector → pick "Weekend Off"T+22 s Confirm Schedule attached. The CronJob will be suspended on weekends.22 seconds from estate view to scheduled. The hierarchy makes this fast.
3. Hands-on (7 min)
For your own estate:
1. Open Resources. Identify any parent with children (cluster, ECS service, Databricks workspace, ASG, ECR repo).2. Click the child count badge to drill in.3. Note the breadcrumb at the top of the page.4. Apply a filter (e.g., Type=Deployment).5. Confirm the filter scope is local to this parent: toggle back to the parent view and observe how the filter availability changes.6. Use the search bar to find a specific resource by name.7. Confirm search overrides scope: even if you're inside one cluster, search returns matches from across the estate.The exercise builds muscle memory for the navigation. Drill and back out multiple times.
4. Knowledge check
Q1
A team wants to suspend one specific Kubernetes CronJob outside business hours. The right navigation path is:
A. Schedule the entire EKS cluster off, which will take every other workload down with it as well
B. Use the AWS console
C. Delete the CronJob
D. Drill into the cluster’s children, find the specific CronJob, attach a schedule to that CronJob individually
Show answer
Correct: D. The parent-child model makes this child-level scheduling natural. Child-level scheduling is exactly what the hierarchy enables. Scheduling the entire cluster would stop production workloads too.
Q2
A user is three levels deep (Resources > Cluster > Nodegroup > Instances) and wants to return to the cluster level. The most efficient way is:
A. Click the “Cluster” segment in the breadcrumb
B. Use the browser back button twice
C. Navigate back from the Resources homepage
D. Refresh the page
Show answer
Correct: A. The breadcrumb is how you move around parent-child hierarchies. Breadcrumb segments are clickable navigation. This is the designed navigation pattern.
Q3
Inside a children view (one specific cluster’s children), the Type filter shows only types present in this cluster (not the full 380+ list). This is:
A. A bug
B. Intentional: filters are scoped to the current view to keep the UI relevant
C. Inconsistent with the rest of the product experience overall in the UI
D. A limitation
Show answer
Correct: B. Search, by contrast, overrides scope and operates across the entire estate. Filters narrow per scope; search overrides scope. This is the designed behavior because each one serves a different intent.
5. Apply
The Resources page implements the hierarchy as:
- Default Parents view with child-count badges per parent
- Click child badge → Children view with breadcrumb navigation
- Per-scope filters that adapt to the current view
- Global search that overrides scope
For specific workload patterns:
- K8s workloads (Deployments, StatefulSets, CronJobs) are children of their cluster
- Databricks (Clusters, Pools, SQL Warehouses) are children of their workspace
Related lessons
Glossary terms touched
Parent-child hierarchy · Breadcrumb · Scoped filter · Global search