What is the purpose of Actions Runner Controller (ARC) in a Kubernetes environment?
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Short Explanation and Infographic
ARC is the Kubernetes operator that spins GitHub Actions runners up and down as jobs arrive — elastic compute for GitHub Actions on your own cluster.
Full explanation below image
Full Explanation
Actions Runner Controller (ARC) is a Kubernetes operator that manages GitHub Actions self-hosted runners on Kubernetes clusters. It automatically scales the number of runner pods based on pending workflow jobs, registers them with GitHub, and deregisters them when idle. ARC supports ephemeral runners (one job per pod) for better security isolation. It's configurable via RunnerDeployment or RunnerScaleSet CRDs. ARC does not manage GitHub's own infrastructure, sync secrets, or convert workflows to Kubernetes Jobs. It's used by organizations that want self-hosted runners without manual scaling.