Four Tips for Scaling Kubernetes Deployment

Just getting started with Kubernetes? Or are you transitioning from a small business to an enterprise-scale deployment? Whatever the case, we have some handy Kubernetes deployment tips to make the process easier.

1. Consider a Managed Service

While it might cost you more, it’s best to use a managed service for enterprise Kubernetes deployments. It’s worth the additional cost. Deployment and maintenance of Kubernetes are challenging, and you want to save yourself the headache of hiring in-house expertise.  

Using managed services can help ease the burden through various levels of support. These include management of self-hosted operations, deployment of templated configurations, and fully managed PaaS (Platform as a Service) solutions.

If you’re interested in Kubernetes development or creation of platforms for the service, you won’t derive any benefit from a managed service.

2. Pay Attention to Security

The complexity of Kubernetes deployments affects security management. You have more moving parts to secure than you may be aware of. To secure your configuration, you should work toward the following goals:

• Control API access: Use TLS (Transport Layer Security) for any traffic and make a point of authenticating and checking the authorization of API clients.
• Control Kubelet access: You need to enable Kubelet authorization and authentication.
• Manage users and workloads: Control access to pod nodes, set resource parameters, and restrict user/workload privileges, cloud metadata API access, and network access.
• Protect cluster components: Rotate infrastructure credentials regularly, restrict eCTD access, and restrict the use of beta and alpha features and third-party integrations. You should also use at-rest encryption.  

Use cluster segmentation along with firewalls native to containers to segregate roles by duty. This can help secure your Kubernetes deployment. But the most important thing for security is monitoring and logging your systems. This helps you quickly act whenever there’s an incident.

3. Monitor and Log System Events

A drop-in availability or a brief downtime can significantly affect productivity and revenue. You can avoid this by employing consistent and robust logging and monitoring measures.  

With proper monitoring, you will receive an alert when there are security and performance issues that need your attention. This allows you to respond immediately to minimize the impact. You can use the full metrics pipeline or resource metrics to achieve this.

Resource metrics provide a limited set of metrics related to the kubectl top utility and cluster components. They’re accessible via API. A full metrics pipeline provides a comprehensive set that’s more convenient for directing automated responses to drops in performance.

Logging can help track down and analyze issues that occur. Your organization needs it for regulatory compliance and auditing. It can provide valuable insights for performance optimization. You log into Kubernetes via kubectl logs or through third-party tools, such as Fluentd or Elastic.

4. Using Custom Controllers

You use controllers in Kubernetes to ensure the required state of a cluster matches the observed state. Each controller is responsible for a specific resource. You have several built-in controllers at your disposal. This ensures the right number of pods is running in a cluster.

Built-in controllers operate very well for standard tasks, but you’re bound to get more control and flexibility from customized controllers. For instance, they can ease the dynamic reloading of app configurations upon the creation of namespaces, cluster change, node issue corrections, deployment monitoring, and others.

Custom controllers can help simplify deployment management processes. They enable you to use very little code to access APIs. They can even provide a declarative API if used in conjunction with custom resources.

Conclusion

Kubernetes deployments are complex. But the benefits of a successful deployment far outweigh the work that goes into the configuration. These tips should help you make the process much easier.

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