Kubernetes in Production
A comprehensive guide to deploying, scaling, and operating Kubernetes clusters in production. Built for engineers who want to master container orchestration and cloud-native infrastructure.
Why This Guide?
As an engineer with 25+ years of experience deploying production systems, I've seen the evolution from physical servers to VMs to containers. Kubernetes has emerged as the standard for container orchestration, but running it successfully in production requires deep understanding of its architecture, operational patterns, and potential pitfalls.
This guide distills years of real-world Kubernetes experience into practical, actionable knowledge. We'll cover everything from core concepts to advanced production patterns, security best practices, troubleshooting techniques, and cost optimization strategies.
Current State (November 2025)
- • Latest Versions: Kubernetes 1.34 (Sept 2025), 1.33, and 1.32 actively supported
- • Adoption: Over 25% of organizations use cloud native for nearly all workloads (CNCF Survey 2024)
- • Ecosystem: 150+ CNCF projects providing production-ready solutions
- • Next Release: Kubernetes 1.35 scheduled with enhanced autoscaling and security features
What You'll Learn
Core Architecture
Control plane, worker nodes, etcd, kubelet, and how they work together
Deployment Strategies
Rolling updates, blue-green, canary deployments, and zero-downtime releases
Networking & Service Mesh
Services, Ingress, NetworkPolicies, DNS, and service mesh patterns
Security Hardening
RBAC, Pod Security Standards, secrets management, and security best practices
Observability
Logging, monitoring, tracing, and debugging production issues
CI/CD & GitOps
Automated deployments, GitOps workflows, and continuous delivery patterns
Prerequisites
This guide assumes you have:
- Experience with Linux/Unix systems and command-line tools
- Understanding of containers and Docker
- Familiarity with networking concepts (TCP/IP, DNS, load balancing)
- Basic knowledge of YAML configuration files
- Experience deploying and operating production systems
Guide Contents
Core Architecture
Understanding Kubernetes architecture, control plane components, and how the system orchestrates containers
Deployments & Workloads
Managing application deployments, ReplicaSets, StatefulSets, DaemonSets, and deployment strategies
Networking
Services, Ingress controllers, NetworkPolicies, DNS, and advanced networking patterns
Storage & Persistence
PersistentVolumes, storage classes, StatefulSets, and managing data in Kubernetes
Configuration Management
ConfigMaps, Secrets, environment variables, and managing application configuration
Security
RBAC, Pod Security Standards, network policies, secrets management, and security best practices
Observability
Logging strategies, monitoring with Prometheus, distributed tracing, and debugging techniques
Scaling & Performance
Horizontal Pod Autoscaling, Vertical Pod Autoscaling, cluster autoscaling, and performance tuning
CI/CD & GitOps
Continuous deployment pipelines, GitOps workflows, ArgoCD, Flux, and automation patterns
Troubleshooting
Common issues, debugging techniques, tools, and troubleshooting methodology
Production Patterns
High availability, disaster recovery, backup strategies, and production-ready architectures
Cost Optimization
Resource management, right-sizing, spot instances, and reducing cloud infrastructure costs
Ready to Master Kubernetes?
Start with Core Architecture to understand the fundamentals, or jump to any topic that interests you.
Start Learning