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Commitment discounts · Low severity

Spot Node Pool Opportunity

Spot nodes are discounted and preemptible; a node pool running interruptible workloads is paying standard rates for a guarantee those workloads do not need.

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2clouds covered
Lowseverity
Savingswhere it shows up
Manualfix, steps written out

AzureGoogle CloudKubernetes

Found, explained, handed over.

Findings with a dollar figure attached, idle, oversized, orphaned, unscheduled and undiscounted spend.

01

Detect

ZopNight checks this automatically across Azure and Google Cloud, with read-only access to the account.

02

Explain

Every finding says exactly what to change: Move the GKE node pool to Spot capacity. Where the saving can be proven it is priced; where it cannot, the finding says so.

03

Fix

The finding opens with the fix already written out, step by step, so it is one ticket, not an investigation.

Applies to
AKS Agent Pools on Azure, GKE Node Pools on Google Cloud
The fix, by hand on Azure
  1. Confirm the workloads scheduled to this AKS cluster tolerate occasional node evictions (graceful shutdown handlers, no single-replica statefulness).
  2. AKS → the resource → Node pools → Add node pool.
  3. Mode = User; tick Enable Azure Spot instances; pick eviction policy = Delete; set Max price = -1.
  4. Add a Kubernetes taint kubernetes.azure.com/scalesetpriority=spot:NoSchedule so only Spot-tolerant pods land here.
  5. Annotate dev/test deployments with the matching toleration + a node affinity for the Spot pool.
  6. Watch evictions in Monitor → Insights → Events; ensure PodDisruptionBudgets keep production safe.

These are the steps the finding carries in the product.

Category
Commitment discounts. Reserved Instance, Savings Plan and Committed Use opportunities, where steady usage justifies a commitment.
Where it appears
The Savings tab of Recommendations, with every affected resource listed.
Rule IDs
RC-114 RC-250
Full reference

GKE Spot Node Pool Opportunity AKS Spot Node Pool Opportunity

Related checks

See the discount opportunities 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.

Multi-cloud automation· Production-ready in 30 min· SOC 2 · ISO 27001· 20–60% off the bill, first month· 4 platforms · 1 console· Multi-cloud automation· Production-ready in 30 min· SOC 2 · ISO 27001· 20–60% off the bill, first month· 4 platforms · 1 console·