The Elastic Storage Revolution: Introducing Zesty Disk for K8s

You heard it here first!

We’re excited to unveil Zesty Disk for Kubernetes–the first dynamic block storage auto-scaler that can be applied to K8s clusters in order to right-size EBS volumes, improve application stability, and reduce storage costs by up to 70% – all while relieving engineers of the burden of managing volumes. 

With Kubernetes being one of the most widely used technologies of our time, we couldn’t help but notice the widespread challenges associated with ordering a specified disk size for containers. The process, which involves specifying the GB size, requires engineers to constantly monitor the volume to ensure there is enough space at any given moment. Otherwise, the stability of running workloads may be compromised. This challenge becomes even more problematic in cloud environments that have hundreds or thousands of running pods, as is typical for many applications. 

Additionally, K8s are often used to orchestrate workloads such as databases, ETLs, and machine learning pipelines, that have very large data ingestion requirements which can potentially overwhelm standard EBS volumes.  When this happens, an application may slow down dramatically or crash due to an “out of disk error” – both significantly impacting the user experience.

Zesty Disk for Kubernetes was developed to overcome all of these challenges, providing greater elasticity and scalability for K8 environments.

Zesty Disk’s enhanced EBS storage enables volumes to automatically expand and shrink according to real-time application needs, eliminating the need to manually adjust or predict volume size. This automatic expansion of volumes ensures that when a huge data influx occurs, it won’t impact the container’s stability or lead to downtime for an app.

In addition, the automatic reduction of volume saves a significant amount of money and time as it eliminates the need to over-provision excess file system capacity and provides the ability to downscale following a large data influx. 

How does it work?

Zesty’s solution is integrated into Persistent Volumes, a building block of K8s. It decouples large file system volumes into a series of multiple volumes that are added or removed on the fly without interrupting the running pod. 

Zesty Disk is ideal for any K8 workload, as its ability to scale storage volumes means it can be applied to both relatively simple tasks as well as workloads that involve intense and dynamic disk usage. 

We’re excited to unveil this new technology today and see how it can help millions of engineers better orchestrate heavy workloads in a manner that ensures both scalability and stability.

If you’re attending Kubecon Valencia, make sure to stop by our booth #S67 to see Zesty Disk for Kubernetes in action! 

Otherwise, reach out to one of our cloud experts to take a closer look at this exciting new technology.