I’ve been thinking of moving my Kubernetes lab into the cloud, but with cloud resource usage being scrutinized by the IT department, running them 24x7 the way I’m used to is a no-go. I need a setup that meets the following requirements: Simple to create and tear down Applications must be pre-deployed when the cluster is up, as close to “just the way I left it there last night” as possible cost $0 when the setup has been switched off I eventually settled on the idea of an ephemeral Kubernetes lab environment using Infrastructure as Code (IaC) and GitOps practices, which I will cover in this post.