karpenter-provider-oci

Karpenter Provider OCI brings Karpenter - powered node provisioning to Oracle Kubernetes Engine (OKE) clusters. It automatically adds and removes worker nodes to match real-time workload demand. Karpenter helps improve utilization and control cost in Kubernetes by:

• Detecting pods that can’t be scheduled due to insufficient capacity
• Interpreting pod placement requirements such as CPU/memory requests, node selectors, affinities, tolerations, and topology spread constraints
• Launching new nodes that satisfy those requirements so workloads can start quickly
• Deprovisioning nodes once they’re no longer needed
• Optimizing the node fleet over time by consolidating workloads onto fewer or more cost-effective nodes with better utilization

Compatibility

Use a karpenter-provider-oci version that is compatible with your Kubernetes cluster version. For upstream Karpenter compatibility details, see the Karpenter compatibility documentation.

Kubernetes Version	karpenter-provider-oci Version
>= v1.31 and <= v1.34	v1.0.0
>= v1.35	v1.1.0 or higher

Installation

See Installation.

Documentation

• Introduction
  • Architecture View
  • Features
• Installation
  • Configure IAM Policies for KPO to manage OCI resources
  • Install KPO Helm Chart
• Helm Chart Reference
• OCI v1beta1 API
• Scheduling Labels
• Usage
  • Use KPO to manage nodes with OCI flexible shapes and an OKE image
  • Ensure worker nodes using an OKE image are always updated to the latest image
  • Maintain a fixed number of worker nodes with static capacity
  • Influence scheduling decisions with NodeOverlay
  • Launch worker nodes for an OciIpNativeCNI cluster
• Advanced Use Cases
  • Spot capacity (OCI preemptible)
  • Reserved capacity (OCI capacity reservations)
  • Burstable instances (flex shapes)
  • Cluster placement groups
  • Compute clusters
  • Customize kubelet
  • Customize compute instances
  • Customize node bootstrap (cloud-init)
  • Ubuntu images
  • Override the OKE image compartment used by imageFilter
• Development
• OCI Resource Discovery and Reclaiming
• FAQs
  • Do special taints added by OKE bootstrapping in specific scenarios apply to Karpenter managed nodes?
  • How to configure Secondary VNICs?
  • How can I ensure deployments are scheduled on a specific karpenter node pool?
  • How can I ensure workloads are evenly scheduled across ADs and FDs with Karpenter Provider OCI?
  • How can I list OKE images compatible with my OKE cluster?
  • Flexible shape node pool isn’t provisioning. Error: “skipping, nodepool requirements filtered out all instance types.” How do I fix this?
  • How to run the OCI Karpenter controller with debug logging?
  • Suggestions regarding KubeletConfig maxPods and podsPerCore

Examples

See curated examples for different use cases.

Additional Resources

• Oracle Cloud Infrastructure documentation for Karpenter Provider OCI
• Blog

Help

• Open a GitHub issue for bug reports, questions, or requests for enhancements.
• Report a security vulnerability according to the Reporting Vulnerabilities guide.

Contributing

This project welcomes contributions from the community. Before submitting a pull request, please review our contribution guide

Security

Please consult the security guide for our responsible security vulnerability disclosure process

License

Copyright (c) 2026 Oracle and/or its affiliates.

Released under the Universal Permissive License v1.0 as shown at https://oss.oracle.com/licenses/upl/.