Abstract: Illustrative embodiments are directed to methods and computer systems for reporting unusual or anomalous usage a commodity by consumers. A computer system retrieves a set of usage-information datasets corresponding to a set of consumers, each dataset including past usage of the commodity during at least one of a completed billing period and a current usage of the commodity during the current billing period. The computer system establishes a set of report-trigger conditions for the current billing period, each of the report-trigger conditions corresponding to a consumer. The computer system may monitor usage or spending of the set of consumers to determine, for each consumer, whether an estimated usage established for each consumer fulfills the consumer's report-trigger condition. Once the report-trigger condition is fulfilled, the computer system outputs a report to the consumer.

Abstract: Multiple instances of a distributed application are run in a Kubernetes cluster. An updated version of the application must undergo some post-launch initialization before a production workload handled by the original version can be switched to the updated version. Accordingly, a temporary update-monitor pod is inserted into the cluster so that it can query the application as to its update status and report it to a log file. A script external to the cluster can read the log file to determine if initialization is complete. If so, the workload can be switched to the update instance. The temporary update-monitor pod is destroyed to free up resources and to ensure that it is does not pose a security vulnerability.