7 ms·

Show HN: K8s Cleaner – Roomba for Kubernetes

68 points by pescerosso 2y ago

Hello HN community! I'm excited to share K8s Cleaner, a tool designed to help you clean up your Kubernetes clusters. As Kubernetes environments grow, they often accumulate unused resources, leading to confusion, waste, and clutter. K8s-cleaner simplifies the process of identifying and removing unnecessary components. The tool scans your Kubernetes clusters for unused or orphaned resources—including pods, services, ingresses, and secrets—and removes them safely. You can fully customize which resources to scan and delete, maintaining complete control over what stays and what goes. Getting Started: Visit https://sveltos.projectsveltos.io/k8sCleaner.html https://sveltos.projectsveltos.io/k8sCleaner.html and click the "Getting Started" button to try K8s-cleaner. Key Features: - Easy to Use: No complex setup or configuration required—perfect for developers and operators alike - Open Source: Modify the code to better fit your specific needs - Community Driven: We welcome your feedback, feature ideas, and bug reports to help improve K8s-cleaner for everyone I'm here to answer questions, address feedback, and discuss ideas for future improvements. Looking forward to your thoughts! And make sure your all you kubernetes clusters are sparkling clean for the holidays. :-) Simone

empath75 2y ago
why isn't this just a cli tool? I don't see any reason it needs to be installed on a cluster. There should at least be an option to scan a cluster from the cli.
- mgianluc 2y ago
  Agree ability to run also as a binary would be helpful.
- sethhochberg 2y ago
  Ironically, I'd bet environments most desperately in need of tools like this are some of the ones where there has been lots of "just run this Helm chart/manifest!" admining over the years...
devops99 2y ago
If you find yourself using something like this, you seriously fucked up as DevOps / cloud admin / whatever.
- cameronh90 2y ago
  Or you're budget constrained, and haven't yet been able to allocate resources to things like GitOps.
- devops99 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
- llama052 2y ago
  Agreed, this feels like the kubernetes descheduler as a service or something. Wild.
- paolop 2y ago
  Possible, but if someone needs it and it works well, why not?
- pescerosso 2y ago
  I understand where you’re coming from, and ideally, we strive for well-managed Kubernetes environments. However, as DevOps practitioners, we often face complexities that lead to stale or orphaned resources due to fast deployment cycles, changing application needs or teams. Even the public clouds make lots of money from services that are left running and not used for which some companies make a living helping clean things up. K8s-cleaner serves as a helpful safety net to automate the identification and cleanup of these resources, reducing manual overhead and minimizing human error. It allows teams to focus on strategic tasks instead of day-to-day resource management.
  - devops99 2y ago
S0y 2y ago
When I saw the headline I was pretty excited, but looking at your examples, I'm really curious about why you decided to make everything work via CRDs? Also having to write code inside those CRD for the cleanup logic seems like a pretty steep learning curve and honestly I'd be pretty scared to end up writing something that would delete my entire cluster. Any reason why you chose this approach over something like a CLI tool you can run on your cluster?
- mgianluc 2y ago
  It has a DryRun that generates a report on which resources would be affected. So you can see what resources identifies as unused before asking it to remove those. I would be scared as well otherwise. Agree.
- mgianluc 2y ago
  one more thing. It comes with a huge library of use cases already covered. So you don't necessarily need to write any new instance. You would need to do that only if you have your own proprietary CRDs or some use case that is not already covered.
- resouer 2y ago
  A CRD controller is expected, especially it will allow your clean up logic long running in cluster or periodically. But writing code inside YAML is very weird, at least there are CEL as option here.
darkwater 2y ago
How does it work in an IaC/CD scenario, with things like Terraform or ArgoCD creating and syncing resources lifecycle inside the cluster? A stale resource, as identified and cleaned by K8s Cleaner, would be recreated in the next sync cycle, right?
- mgianluc 2y ago
  In that case I would use it in DryRun mode and have it generate a report. Then look at the report and if it makes sense, fix the terraform or ArgoCD configuration. More on report: https://gianlucam76.github.io/k8s-cleaner/reports/k8s-cleaner_reports/ https://gianlucam76.github.io/k8s-cleaner/reports/k8s-cleane...
  - imcritic 2y ago
    Improve it! Teach it to figure out if the resource is managed by ArgoCD or FluxCD and then suspend reconciliation.
    - devops76 2y ago
      It is open source. The least we could do if we find something else useful would be to file an enhancement request. Be nice.
  - darkwater 2y ago
    Nice, it's something already. But probably as someone else was saying, it would be cool to iterate and improve this. Because, if you want to have a product to sell out of this (and I guess you do?), your n.1 client will be (IMO) big enterprises, which usually have a lot of cruft in their clusters and go after cost optimizations. But they also usually don't shove manifests in directly, they have at least one solution on top of it that takes care of resources lifecycle. So, IMO, if you want your product to be useful for those kind of customers, this is something that need to be improved.
caust1c 2y ago
So is this the first instance of a Cloud C-Cleaner then? You could call it CCCleaner!
paolop 2y ago
I've been using it for a bit now and very happy with it. The stale-persistent-volume-claim detection has been almost a 100% hit in my case; it's a real game-changer for cleaning up disk space. Kubernetes clutter can quickly become a headache, and having a tool like this to identify and remove unused resources has made my workflow so much smoother.
zzyzxd 2y ago
For resources that are supposed to be cleaned up automatically, fixing your operator/finalizer is a better approach. Using this tool is just kicking the can down the road, which may cause even bigger problem. If you have resources that need to be regularly created and deleted, I feel a cronjob running `kubectl delete -l <your-label-selector>` should be more than enough, and less risker than installing a 3rd party software with cluster wide list/delete permission.
- pcl 2y ago
  How should I discover the things that need deletion? Presumably running some sort of analysis tool in a dry-run mode would help, no?
  - leetbulb 2y ago
    https://github.com/yonahd/kor https://github.com/yonahd/kor
    - devops76 2y ago
      It appears to cover all that kor covers and more. I like the flexibility of cleaner. Both useful tools IMHO.
- __turbobrew__ 2y ago
  I think it can be useful as a discovery tool. How do you know that your operator is leaking resources in the first place? What if one of your cluster operators manually modified or created resources?
- devops76 2y ago
  Most of the times you don't own the operator/finalizer And most of the times, when it is a shared cluster, you don't even know what else is being deployed.
cjk 2y ago
I feel like the fact that this even needs to exist is a damning indictment of k8s.
- mdaniel 2y ago
  Oh, good to know that your environment never loses track of any cloud resource. Maybe apply to Netflix, since it seems they're still trying to solve that problem https://www.theregister.com/2024/12/18/netflix_aws_management_tools/ https://www.theregister.com/2024/12/18/netflix_aws_managemen... <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42448541 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42448541>
  - cjk 2y ago
    Sure, I’ll grant you that at huge companies it’s probably easy to lose track of who is responsible for what and when resources ought to be cleaned up. But for small/medium-sized companies, using Terraform is sufficient. And while you can also use Terraform to manage resources on k8s, there’s a lot more friction to doing so than using YAML + `kubectl apply`. It’s far too easy to `kubectl apply` and create a bunch of garbage that you forget to clean up.
brianecox 2y ago
Sounds useful.
siva7 2y ago
Don’t let these naysayers here discourage you. I’ve used CCleaner on Windows 20 years ago, so why not finally now on my kube cluster.
kiney 2y ago
I've been saying for a while that most of the time we didn't replace pets with cattle bit pet servers with pet clusters. The need for a tool like this proves my point
fyodor0 2y ago
Looking at other comments and drawing Windows parallel, I propose kkCleaner Useful project nevertheless!
mia_villarreal 2y ago
Seems like a simple and effective tool!

68 points by pescerosso 2y ago

empath75 2y ago

why isn't this just a cli tool? I don't see any reason it needs to be installed on a cluster. There should at least be an option to scan a cluster from the cli.

mgianluc 2y ago
Agree ability to run also as a binary would be helpful.
sethhochberg 2y ago
Ironically, I'd bet environments most desperately in need of tools like this are some of the ones where there has been lots of "just run this Helm chart/manifest!" admining over the years...

devops99 2y ago

If you find yourself using something like this, you seriously fucked up as DevOps / cloud admin / whatever.

cameronh90 2y ago
Or you're budget constrained, and haven't yet been able to allocate resources to things like GitOps.
devops99 2y ago
[flagged]
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
llama052 2y ago
Agreed, this feels like the kubernetes descheduler as a service or something. Wild.
paolop 2y ago
Possible, but if someone needs it and it works well, why not?
pescerosso 2y ago
I understand where you’re coming from, and ideally, we strive for well-managed Kubernetes environments. However, as DevOps practitioners, we often face complexities that lead to stale or orphaned resources due to fast deployment cycles, changing application needs or teams. Even the public clouds make lots of money from services that are left running and not used for which some companies make a living helping clean things up. K8s-cleaner serves as a helpful safety net to automate the identification and cleanup of these resources, reducing manual overhead and minimizing human error. It allows teams to focus on strategic tasks instead of day-to-day resource management.
- devops99 2y ago

S0y 2y ago

When I saw the headline I was pretty excited, but looking at your examples, I'm really curious about why you decided to make everything work via CRDs? Also having to write code inside those CRD for the cleanup logic seems like a pretty steep learning curve and honestly I'd be pretty scared to end up writing something that would delete my entire cluster. Any reason why you chose this approach over something like a CLI tool you can run on your cluster?

mgianluc 2y ago
It has a DryRun that generates a report on which resources would be affected. So you can see what resources identifies as unused before asking it to remove those. I would be scared as well otherwise. Agree.
mgianluc 2y ago
one more thing. It comes with a huge library of use cases already covered. So you don't necessarily need to write any new instance. You would need to do that only if you have your own proprietary CRDs or some use case that is not already covered.
resouer 2y ago
A CRD controller is expected, especially it will allow your clean up logic long running in cluster or periodically. But writing code inside YAML is very weird, at least there are CEL as option here.

darkwater 2y ago

How does it work in an IaC/CD scenario, with things like Terraform or ArgoCD creating and syncing resources lifecycle inside the cluster? A stale resource, as identified and cleaned by K8s Cleaner, would be recreated in the next sync cycle, right?

mgianluc 2y ago
In that case I would use it in DryRun mode and have it generate a report. Then look at the report and if it makes sense, fix the terraform or ArgoCD configuration. More on report: https://gianlucam76.github.io/k8s-cleaner/reports/k8s-cleaner_reports/ https://gianlucam76.github.io/k8s-cleaner/reports/k8s-cleane...
- imcritic 2y ago
  Improve it! Teach it to figure out if the resource is managed by ArgoCD or FluxCD and then suspend reconciliation.
  - devops76 2y ago
    It is open source. The least we could do if we find something else useful would be to file an enhancement request. Be nice.
- darkwater 2y ago
  Nice, it's something already. But probably as someone else was saying, it would be cool to iterate and improve this. Because, if you want to have a product to sell out of this (and I guess you do?), your n.1 client will be (IMO) big enterprises, which usually have a lot of cruft in their clusters and go after cost optimizations. But they also usually don't shove manifests in directly, they have at least one solution on top of it that takes care of resources lifecycle. So, IMO, if you want your product to be useful for those kind of customers, this is something that need to be improved.

caust1c 2y ago

So is this the first instance of a Cloud C-Cleaner then? You could call it CCCleaner!

paolop 2y ago

I've been using it for a bit now and very happy with it. The stale-persistent-volume-claim detection has been almost a 100% hit in my case; it's a real game-changer for cleaning up disk space. Kubernetes clutter can quickly become a headache, and having a tool like this to identify and remove unused resources has made my workflow so much smoother.

zzyzxd 2y ago

For resources that are supposed to be cleaned up automatically, fixing your operator/finalizer is a better approach. Using this tool is just kicking the can down the road, which may cause even bigger problem. If you have resources that need to be regularly created and deleted, I feel a cronjob running `kubectl delete -l <your-label-selector>` should be more than enough, and less risker than installing a 3rd party software with cluster wide list/delete permission.

pcl 2y ago
How should I discover the things that need deletion? Presumably running some sort of analysis tool in a dry-run mode would help, no?
- leetbulb 2y ago
  https://github.com/yonahd/kor https://github.com/yonahd/kor
  - devops76 2y ago
    It appears to cover all that kor covers and more. I like the flexibility of cleaner. Both useful tools IMHO.
__turbobrew__ 2y ago
I think it can be useful as a discovery tool. How do you know that your operator is leaking resources in the first place? What if one of your cluster operators manually modified or created resources?
devops76 2y ago
Most of the times you don't own the operator/finalizer And most of the times, when it is a shared cluster, you don't even know what else is being deployed.

cjk 2y ago

I feel like the fact that this even needs to exist is a damning indictment of k8s.

mdaniel 2y ago
Oh, good to know that your environment never loses track of any cloud resource. Maybe apply to Netflix, since it seems they're still trying to solve that problem https://www.theregister.com/2024/12/18/netflix_aws_management_tools/ https://www.theregister.com/2024/12/18/netflix_aws_managemen... <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42448541 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42448541>
- cjk 2y ago
  Sure, I’ll grant you that at huge companies it’s probably easy to lose track of who is responsible for what and when resources ought to be cleaned up. But for small/medium-sized companies, using Terraform is sufficient. And while you can also use Terraform to manage resources on k8s, there’s a lot more friction to doing so than using YAML + `kubectl apply`. It’s far too easy to `kubectl apply` and create a bunch of garbage that you forget to clean up.

brianecox 2y ago

Sounds useful.

siva7 2y ago

Don’t let these naysayers here discourage you. I’ve used CCleaner on Windows 20 years ago, so why not finally now on my kube cluster.

kiney 2y ago

I've been saying for a while that most of the time we didn't replace pets with cattle bit pet servers with pet clusters. The need for a tool like this proves my point

fyodor0 2y ago

Looking at other comments and drawing Windows parallel, I propose kkCleaner Useful project nevertheless!

mia_villarreal 2y ago

Seems like a simple and effective tool!