Enabling Karpenter on EKS with Terraform: What It Is, Why It's Worth It, and How to Set It Up

Karpenter optimizes Amazon EKS by replacing traditional Cluster Autoscaler models. Instead of guessing instance types or setting minimum and maximum limits, Karpenter monitors unschedulable pods and launches precise EC2 capacity. To implement this via Terraform, users require a running EKS cluster, Terraform v1.11+, a VPC, subnets, and security groups. Additional prerequisites include Helm v3+, kubectl, and the AWS CLI. This approach simplifies capacity management by aligning infrastructure directly with pod requirements for improved efficiency.