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Indrajith Ekanayake

Publications and source records attributed to Indrajith Ekanayake.

4 recordsLinked to original sources

NimbusGuard: A Novel Framework for Proactive Kubernetes Autoscaling Using Deep Q-Networks

Cloud native architecture is about building and running scalable microservice applications to take full advantage of the cloud environments. Managed Kubernetes is the powerhouse orchestrating cloud native applications with elastic scaling. However, traditional Kubernetes autoscalers are reactive, meaning the scaling controllers adjust resources only after they detect demand within the cluster and do not incorporate any predictive measures. This can lead to either over-provisioning and increased costs or under-provisioning and performance degradation. We propose NimbusGuard, an open-source, Kubernetes-based autoscaling system that leverages a deep reinforcement learning agent to provide proactive autoscaling. The agents perception is augmented by a Long Short-Term Memory model that forecasts future workload patterns. The evaluations were conducted by comparing NimbusGuard against the built-in scaling controllers, such as Horizontal Pod Autoscaler, and the event-driven autoscaler KEDA. The experimental results demonstrate how NimbusGuard's proactive framework translates into superior performance and cost efficiency compared to existing reactive methods.

cs.DC

ARGO-SLSA: Software Supply Chain Security in Argo Workflows

Distributed systems widely adopt microservice architecture to handle growing complexity and scale. This approach breaks applications into independent, loosely coupled services. Kubernetes has become the de facto standard for managing microservices, and automating complex, multi-step workflows is a common requirement in Kubernetes. Argo Workflows is a Kubernetes-native engine for managing these workflows in an automated fashion. These workflows generate artifacts such as executables, logs, container images, and packages, which often require proper management through software supply chain security. However, Argo Workflows does not include built-in functionality for frameworks like Supply-chain Levels for Software Artifacts (SLSA), which is essential for ensuring artifact integrity, traceability, and security. This gap compels practitioners to rely on external tools to meet software supply chain security standards. In response, this paper proposes a Kubernetes-native controller built on top of existing open-source Argo Workflows to enhance artifact security. By generating cryptographic signing and provenance attestations, the controller enables Argo Workflows to comply with SLSA standards. We demonstrate that implementations can provide such cryptographic signing and provenance attestations for artifacts produced by the controller, allowing software artifacts built with Argo Workflows to adhere to SLSA requirements. The proposed validation model evaluates the proof of concept of the controller, including its ability to reconcile workflows, detect pods associated with workflow nodes, operate without disrupting existing operations, enforce integrity, and monitor software artifacts.

cs.DC

Explainability, risk modeling, and segmentation based customer churn analytics for personalized retention in e-commerce

In online retail, customer acquisition typically incurs higher costs than customer retention, motivating firms to invest in churn analytics. However, many contemporary churn models operate as opaque black boxes, limiting insight into the determinants of attrition, the timing of retention opportunities, and the identification of high-risk customer segments. Accordingly, the emphasis should shift from prediction alone to the design of personalized retention strategies grounded in interpretable evidence. This study advances a three-component framework that integrates explainable AI to quantify feature contributions, survival analysis to model time-to-event churn risk, and RFM profiling to segment customers by transactional behaviour. In combination, these methods enable the attribution of churn drivers, estimation of intervention windows, and prioritization of segments for targeted actions, thereby supporting strategies that reduce attrition and strengthen customer loyalty.

cs.AI

K8s Pro Sentinel: Extend Secret Security in Kubernetes Cluster

Microservice architecture is widely adopted among distributed systems. It follows the modular approach that decomposes large software applications into independent services. Kubernetes has become the standard tool for managing these microservices. It stores sensitive information like database passwords, API keys, and access tokens as Secret Objects. There are security mechanisms employed to safeguard these confidential data, such as encryption, Role Based Access Control (RBAC), and the least privilege principle. However, manually configuring these measures is time-consuming, requires specialized knowledge, and is prone to human error, thereby increasing the risks of misconfiguration. This research introduces K8s Pro Sentinel, an operator that automates the configuration of encryption and access control for Secret Objects by extending the Kubernetes API server. This automation reduces human error and enhances security within clusters. The performance and reliability of the Sentinel operator were evaluated using Red Hat Operator Scorecard and chaos engineering practices.

cs.DC