EKS Abandoned Node Group
The node group keeps its instances running and billed, and a group nothing schedules onto is capacity the cluster autoscaler was never told to remove.
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AWSKubernetes
Found, explained, fixed.
Findings with a dollar figure attached, idle, oversized, orphaned, unscheduled and undiscounted spend.
Detect
ZopNight checks this automatically across AWS, with read-only access to the account.
Explain
Every finding says exactly what to change: Delete the abandoned EKS node group. Where the saving can be proven it is priced; where it cannot, the finding says so.
Fix
After a guided review, where you confirm the change, ZopNight deletes the resource, then checks the change took.
- Applies to
- EKS Node Groups on AWS
- The fix, by hand
- eksctl get nodegroup --cluster ‹cluster›. Confirm the resource has desired_size=0 or status DEGRADED.
- kubectl get pods --all-namespaces -o wide --field-selector spec.nodeName=‹any node from this group›. Verify no live workloads pinned to the group.
- Inspect for orphaned LoadBalancer services (kubectl get svc -A | grep LoadBalancer) and orphaned PVCs that targeted nodes in this group.
- EKS → Cluster → Compute → Node groups → select the resource → Delete.
- Clean up associated EC2 Launch Templates, security groups, and IAM node-role inline policies if no longer referenced.
ZopNight does this for you after a guided review.
- Category
- Idle resources. Resources running but doing no useful work: zero invocations, no connections, no traffic.
- Where it appears
- The Savings tab of Recommendations, with every affected resource listed.
- Rule ID
RC-043- Full reference
Related checks
See the idle resources in your account.
Connect a read-only role and the first pass runs on your own estate. This check, and the rest of the catalogue, with it.
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- $30M+annualised cloud spend under management
- 550K+resources tracked since launch
- 20-60%off the bill in the first month
- SOC 2Type II report, plus ISO 27001
Figures published on zop.dev.