Overview
Karpenter is the node autoscaler used across all data platform clusters. It replaces static node groups with dynamic, workload-aware provisioning: nodes are created on demand when workloads need them and removed shortly after they go idle.
AWS
AWS Karpenter uses the karpenter-provider-aws and two CRD types: EC2NodeClass (defines the EC2 node template) and NodePool (defines scheduling constraints and limits per workload).
AliCloud
AliCloud Karpenter uses the karpenter-provider-alibabacloud maintained by CloudPilot AI. The API surface mirrors the AWS provider — the same NodePool CRD is used, but the node template CRD is ECSNodeClass instead of EC2NodeClass.