Hibernating a Kubernetes cluster
There will be times when you won’t be using your Gardener-based cluster much, if at all. To save on costs, you can put the whole cluster in hibernation. If you do, then from that time on (and until you wake the cluster again), you will be paying less for the cluster.
Prerequisites
We assume you have already used Gardener in Cleura Cloud to spin up a Kubernetes cluster, which is now humming away. If you’ve never done this before, please feel free to follow this guide.
Hibernating a cluster
Fire up your favorite web browser and navigate to https://cleura.cloud. Make sure the vertical pane at the left-hand side of the page is in full view, then choose Containers → Gardener. In the main pane, you will see your Gardener cluster. Click anywhere on the corresponding row for a detailed view of the various cluster characteristics. Go to the Status tab and check if hibernation is possible.
If hibernation is indeed possible, this will be reflected in the Constraints section. To go ahead and actually hibernate the cluster, click the orange three-dot icon at the right-hand side of the cluster row, and from the pop-up menu that appears, select Hibernate Cluster.
A big pop-up window will appear, asking you to confirm the action. Click the red button labeled Yes, Hibernate.
After a minute or two, the cluster will be in a hibernated state. This fact will be indicated by the white-square-in-red-circle icon, at the left-hand side of the cluster row.
At this point, and as long as the cluster is in hibernation, any
attempt to list the cluster nodes, e.g., via kubectl, will fail.
Waking up a cluster in hibernation
To wake up a cluster in hibernation, click the orange three-dot icon at the right-hand side of its row. From the pop-up menu that appears, select Wake up Cluster.
A big pop-up window will appear, asking you to confirm that you want to wake the cluster. Go ahead and click the red Yes, Wakeup button.
After a couple of minutes, the cluster will be fully awake. The fact will be indicated by the white-tick-in-green-circle icon, at the left-hand side of the cluster row.
From that time on, the cluster will be accessible and fully operational again.
Created: 2023-03-16