Kubernetes fix saves 600 engineering hours annually

Cloudflare engineers identified a significant bottleneck in their Kubernetes environment, where restarting a critical tool called Atlantis caused 30-minute delays and blocked infrastructure changes. This issue, stemming from a Kubernetes default behavior that became problematic as the tool's persistent volume grew to millions of files, resulted in over 50 hours of lost engineering time monthly. The team meticulously traced the problem by examining Kubernetes and kubelet logs, pinpointing an unexplained gap during pod scheduling and persistent volume mounting. Ultimately, a single-line code adjustment resolved the issue, reclaiming approximately 600 hours of engineering time per year and eliminating unnecessary on-call alerts.