Kubernetes Services

Kubernetes is best suited for production workloads requiring high availability, automatic scaling, and multi-service orchestration. For local development, small projects, or single-server deployments, Docker Compose offers far less complexity. A common pattern is to use Docker Compose for development and Kubernetes for staging and production environments.

Managed services handle the control plane — API server, etcd, scheduler — removing the burden of upgrades and high availability for core components. Self-managed clusters using kubeadm or k3s give you full control but require you to maintain the control plane yourself. For most organizations, managed services reduce operational overhead significantly while costing only marginally more.

Kubernetes provides three scaling mechanisms: the Horizontal Pod Autoscaler (HPA) adds or removes pod replicas based on CPU, memory, or custom metrics; the Vertical Pod Autoscaler (VPA) adjusts resource requests for individual pods; and the Cluster Autoscaler provisions or removes worker nodes as demand changes. These can work together to provide fully automated scaling from pod to infrastructure level.

An operator is a custom controller that extends Kubernetes to manage complex, stateful applications like databases, message queues, or monitoring stacks. Operators encode operational knowledge — such as backup schedules, failover procedures, and upgrade paths — into software. You would use an operator when managing applications that require lifecycle management beyond what Deployments and StatefulSets provide natively.

Start with RBAC policies to control who can access what resources, and use network policies to restrict pod-to-pod communication. Enable pod security standards to prevent privileged containers, scan images for vulnerabilities in your CI pipeline, and rotate secrets using tools like Sealed Secrets or external secret managers. Regularly update your cluster version and audit API server logs for suspicious activity.

GitOps is a deployment methodology where the desired state of your Kubernetes cluster is stored in Git repositories. Tools like ArgoCD or Flux continuously reconcile the cluster state with the Git source of truth, automatically applying changes when commits are pushed. This approach provides audit trails, easy rollbacks via git revert, and ensures that the running environment always matches the declared configuration.