Community Note
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Tell us about your request
I would like to be able to disable swap which is currently present and ON by default at least in Bottlerocket (EKS Auto, Standard) 2026.8.10 (aws-k8s-1.34-standard)
Which service(s) is this request for?
EKS
Tell us about the problem you're trying to solve. What are you trying to do, and why is it hard?
Default parameters for swap usage is 200 and tight memory usage in deployed node can lead your node into indefinite high CPU usage by [kswapd0] outside of Karpenter management
Users should have ability to disable swap memory which can be harmful when enabled by default.
This makes using Auto Mode dangerous for any production environment as it creates instability due to unexpected CPU usage spikes
Are you currently working around this issue?
I believe Auto Mode makes it impossible to customize right now, unless there is some hack to do it with custom node pool
We can only use DaemonSet to reduce vm.swappiness from 200 to more manageable 60
Example
I created terraform module to provide more convenient way to deploy daemon
Additional context
Swap by default is dangerous when not communicated to user as it creates unexplained issues (CPU spike, liveness probe failures due to CPU overload)
Community Note
Tell us about your request
I would like to be able to disable swap which is currently present and ON by default at least in
Bottlerocket (EKS Auto, Standard) 2026.8.10 (aws-k8s-1.34-standard)Which service(s) is this request for?
EKS
Tell us about the problem you're trying to solve. What are you trying to do, and why is it hard?
Default parameters for swap usage is 200 and tight memory usage in deployed node can lead your node into indefinite high CPU usage by
[kswapd0]outside of Karpenter managementUsers should have ability to disable swap memory which can be harmful when enabled by default.
This makes using Auto Mode dangerous for any production environment as it creates instability due to unexpected CPU usage spikes
Are you currently working around this issue?
I believe Auto Mode makes it impossible to customize right now, unless there is some hack to do it with custom node pool
We can only use DaemonSet to reduce
vm.swappinessfrom 200 to more manageable 60Example
I created terraform module to provide more convenient way to deploy daemon
Additional context
Swap by default is dangerous when not communicated to user as it creates unexplained issues (CPU spike, liveness probe failures due to CPU overload)