Running Kubernetes in production requires careful navigation
Jeroen Overmaat
Proven Director of Sales and Sales Manager, with two cool kids | Helping start-ups or scale-ups translate their business goals into reality | Always on top of new technology.
Blog #6 - Amsterdam, November 13, 2023.
Welcome to the world of Kubernetes production racing! Just like a thrilling car race, running Kubernetes in production requires careful navigation and strategic planning. Buckle up and get ready to rev your engines as we explore the challenges and considerations on the race track. We'll share best practices and real-world experiences to help you ensure that your Kubernetes clusters are ready to race to victory in production environments! I talk about high availability, disaster recovery, backup and restore strategies, and observability to help readers ensure your Kubernetes clusters are production-ready.
High Availability: The Pit Stops for Resilience In the fast-paced world of Kubernetes production racing, high availability is crucial to keep your applications running smoothly. Just like a well-executed pit stop, ensure your cluster can handle failures without losing momentum. Distribute your workloads across multiple nodes and availability zones, similar to how a race car driver manoeuvres through different tracks. Utilise Kubernetes features like ReplicaSets and StatefulSets to maintain optimal replica counts and ensure uninterrupted performance. Remember, staying on track is the key to success!
Utilise Kubernetes features like ReplicaSets and StatefulSets to manage the number of replicas for your applications. This helps ensure that even if a pod or node fails, the desired number of replicas is maintained, and the workload can continue running seamlessly.
Distribute your workloads across multiple nodes and availability zones. This helps prevent a single point of failure and improves resiliency. Consider using tools like Kubernetes Cluster Autoscaler to automatically scale your cluster based on workload demands.
Implement health checks and readiness probes to monitor the health of your application components. This enables Kubernetes to automatically detect and react to failures, replacing unhealthy pods with new ones.
Disaster Recovery: The Checkered Flag for Safety In the high-speed race of Kubernetes production, disaster recovery is your checkered flag of safety. Be prepared for unexpected crashes by implementing robust recovery strategies. Back up critical data and configuration regularly, just like a driver who inspects their car before each race. Leverage tools like Velero or CSI snapshots to create restore points and protect against mishaps. Practice your disaster recovery procedures like a well-rehearsed pit crew, ensuring a swift and seamless recovery when the unexpected occurs.
Regularly back up critical data and configuration to protect against data loss. Leverage tools like Velero (formerly Heptio Ark) to create backups of your Kubernetes resources and Persistent Volumes.
Store backups in a separate location from your production cluster. This safeguards your data in case of cluster-wide failures or disasters.
Establish recovery time objectives (RTO) and recovery point objectives (RPO) to define your desired recovery goals. This helps you determine how frequently to perform backups and how quickly you need to restore your environment in case of a failure.
Test your disaster recovery procedures regularly to ensure they work as expected. Conduct simulations and practice restoring your cluster from backups to validate the recovery process.
Backup and Restore Strategies: Navigating the Pit Lane of Data Protection In the fast-paced world of Kubernetes production racing, backup and restore strategies are like navigating the pit lane—essential for data protection and minimising risks. Utilise container-native backup solutions to safeguard your persistent data and application state. Consider tools like Stash or Ark for smooth backup and restore operations. Just like a skilled pit crew, a well-executed backup strategy will keep your race on track.
Leverage container-native backup solutions like Stash (formerly called Velero) or Ark to create consistent backups of your Kubernetes resources, including Deployments, ConfigMaps, and Secrets.
Ensure that your backup strategy includes both application data and the cluster's configuration, such as Kubernetes manifests and custom resource definitions (CRDs).
Regularly test the restore process by performing trial restores in a non-production environment. This helps verify the integrity of your backups and ensures you can recover your applications and data successfully.
Observability: The Telemetry for Peak Performance To achieve peak performance in the Kubernetes production race, you need observability that acts as your car's telemetry system. Embrace observability practices to gain deep insights into your cluster's performance. Utilise monitoring solutions like Prometheus and Grafana to track resource utilisation, identify bottlenecks, and detect anomalies. Implement distributed tracing with tools like Jaeger to understand the flow of requests through your microservices. With observability as your racing telemetry, you'll be able to fine-tune your performance and avoid crashes on the race track.
Utilise monitoring solutions like Prometheus and Grafana to gather metrics and visualise the performance of your Kubernetes cluster, including CPU and memory utilisation, networking metrics, and application-specific metrics.
Implement logging solutions like the ELK (Elasticsearch, Logstash, Kibana) stack or centralized logging platforms such as Fluentd or Loki. This enables you to collect and analyze logs from your applications and infrastructure components, helping you troubleshoot issues and gain insights into system behavior.
Implement distributed tracing with tools like Jaeger or OpenTelemetry to track and analyze the flow of requests across your microservices. This helps identify performance bottlenecks and optimize the performance of your applications.
Lessons Learned: Stories from the Winners' Circle Just like winning race car drivers, Kubernetes production experts have valuable lessons to share. Learn from real-world experiences to avoid common pitfalls. Foster a culture of continuous improvement and knowledge sharing within your team, similar to how racing teams analyse their performance after each race. Document lessons learned, share post-race analyses, and encourage open communication. Remember, the race to success is a team effort!
Document and share post-mortems and incident analyses to capture lessons learned from any previous production incidents or issues. This promotes a culture of continuous improvement and helps prevent similar problems from recurring.
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Foster knowledge sharing within your team through regular meetings, workshops, or brown bag sessions. Encourage team members to share their experiences and insights, allowing everyone to benefit from collective knowledge.
Stay connected with the Kubernetes community by participating in forums, attending conferences, or joining online communities. Engage with peers, ask questions, and learn from the experiences of others in the field.
In Conclusion:
Congratulations, fearless Kubernetes racers! By focusing on high availability, disaster recovery, backup and restore strategies, and observability, you're ready to conquer the production race track. Approach this race with a winning mindset, adaptability, and a hunger for continuous improvement. With these best practices and the wisdom gained from those who have crossed the finish line, your Kubernetes production environment will race towards victory. Start your engines, and may your Kubernetes cluster always be at the front of the pack! By practicing these strategies and incorporating the knowledge gained from successful Kubernetes production deployments, you'll be well-equipped to navigate the production race track with confidence and achieve optimal performance and resilience in your Kubernetes clusters.
Disclaimer Alert
Folks, let's get a few things straight: this article is my own personal take on the matter, and it's as personal as your grandma's secret cookie recipe – unapproved by anyone but yours truly! So, consider this article as my solo journey into the quirky world of tech, where my (sales) creativity dances with analysis. If it makes you chuckle or raises an insightful eyebrow, that's awesome! If it makes you scratch your head in bewilderment, well, that's part of the fun too.
But remember, dear readers, this is all in good fun, and it doesn't constitute official tech doctrine or employer-approved wisdom. It's just me, my thoughts, and a touch of humor thrown into the tech mix.
About the author
In the world of Kubernetes, Jeroen Overmaat joined Spectro Cloud in February 2022 as Managing Director EMEA. Jeroen's 'business model' is to help software companies to gain marketshare in the European market, by establishing a sales-, inside sales (SDR's) and marketing team within the European market, expanding and opening his network to win the hearts of your future customers.
Jeroen earned his ‘Kubernetes milage’ when he joined Rancher by SUSE in April 2019 as Regional Director Benelux & Nordics. Previously, Jeroen gained his DevOps experience via Puppet which had a unique way to turn the world of infrastructure upside down by introducing declarative language into this world and introduced infrastructure as code to the European market. Prior to Puppet, Jeroen was a senior Strategic Account Executive serving strategic customers for VMware in Finance, Insurance, Telco and Service Provider markets. Jeroen is passionate about driving change in the way companies should use and re-think their current and future IT strategy to drive 'software defined'.
More articles:
Jeroen's previous article 'Juggling APIs and Containers: The Circus of Modern Architecture' can be found here:
Jeroen also wrote: 'The Growing Significance of Edge Computing in the Era of Digital Transformation'. This article explores the reasons behind the growing importance of edge computing and its potential to revolutionise the digital landscape:
In the article 'Navigating the Digital Frontier: Edge Computing and Kubernetes', Jeroen embarks on a journey to understand how Kubernetes and Edge join forces to manage the untamed frontier of Edge Computing: https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/navigating-digital-frontier-edge-computing-kubernetes-jeroen-overmaat/
If you run into issues on how to manage your different Kubernetes worlds (on prem or in the cloud, that is), read: 'Kubernetes Showdown: Vanilla vs. Managed – Why Spectro Cloud Palette is the Spice You Need!':
Or read his recent article on 'Kubernetes Adoption in Europe: A Personal Journey into IT Transformation'. In this article I gave my personal view on the adoption of Kubernetes in Europe:
An interview of Jeroen on 'how Kubernetes is driving change' can be found at: https://www.edgecomputing-news.com/2022/08/23/jeroen-overmaat-spectro-cloud-how-kubernetes-is-driving-change/