Practical Zombie Hunting for Kubernetes Users - Holly Cummins, Red Hat
Holly Cummins, Red Hat
KubeCon + CloudNativeCon Europe 2025 · Session
In this insightful KubeCon EU talk, Holly Cummins of Red Hat tackles a pervasive yet often overlooked problem in modern IT infrastructure: the proliferation of "zombie" and "underutilized" servers. These are resources that consume electricity, contribute to carbon emissions, and incur significant financial costs without delivering any useful work. Cummins, drawing from her experience as a consultant and her work on **Quarkus**, highlights the scale of this global issue, which extends from individual developers forgetting small cloud instances to major corporations misplacing hundreds of GPUs. The talk not only quantifies the staggering waste but also delves into the underlying human and technical reasons for its existence, offering practical strategies for detection and, more importantly, "destruction" through a concept she champions: **Light Switch Ops**.
AI review
Holly Cummins delivers a highly practical and well-researched talk on the pervasive issue of zombie and underutilized servers. She quantifies the staggering financial and environmental waste, dissects the human and technical drivers behind it, and proposes a clear, actionable solution: "Light Switch Ops." The talk is grounded in empirical data, real-world examples of significant savings, and offers concrete strategies for detection and decommissioning, making it a valuable session for anyone in cloud operations or infrastructure management.