Kubernetes has become the de facto standard for running containerized workloads, but most production challenges don’t come from “how to deploy a Pod”, but from architectural decisions, operational trade-offs, and ecosystem complexity.
This page acts as a technical hub collecting all my in-depth articles on Kubernetes, focused on real-world usage, production patterns, and non-obvious problems that appear once clusters grow beyond toy examples.
The content is aimed at engineers and architects who already use Kubernetes and want to understand why certain things behave the way they do, when to use (or avoid) specific features, and how to operate clusters reliably at scale.
Kubernetes Mental Model
Kubernetes is best understood as a set of loosely coupled control planes, each solving a different concern. Most production issues happen at the boundaries between these concerns.
- Core architecture & primitives
- Networking & traffic management
- Scheduling & workload placement
- Security & policy enforcement
- State, storage & persistence
- Operations, upgrades & troubleshooting
🧩 Architecture & Core Concepts
- EKS Fargate: Hybrid Kubernetes AWS cluster — Run a hybrid EKS cluster combining EC2 nodes and Fargate
- Managed Container Platform: Top 3 Reasons why you should go it — Why managed Kubernetes platforms reduce operational burden.
- Kubernetes Distributions — What Are They and Top 5 Best Players Available — A landscape overview of Kubernetes distributions and when to use each.
- Kubernetes Advanced Topics: Init Containers — Use init containers for setup tasks before main containers start.
- Why You Should Empower ConfigMaps in Your Kubernetes Deployments? — Best practices for externalizing configuration with ConfigMaps.
- Discovering The Truth Behind Kubernetes Secrets — How Kubernetes Secrets work and their real security implications.
- Kubernetes Metadata: Empower Your Apps With Content From Your Pods. — Expose pod metadata to applications using the Downward API
- Multi Container Pod: How, When, and Why — Sidecar, ambassador, and adapter patterns explained.
- Kubernetes Operators: 5 Things You Truly Need to Know — The fundamentals of Kubernetes Operators and when to build one.
- Learn How to Write Kubernetes YAML Manifest more Efficiently — Write cleaner, more maintainable Kubernetes YAML with practical tips.
- Nomad vs Kubernetes: 1 Emerging Contestant Defying The Proven King — Compare Nomad and Kubernetes for container orchestration.
- ConfigMap with Optional Values in Kubernetes — Handle optional ConfigMap keys gracefully to avoid pod startup failures.
- Talos: A Modern Kubernetes-Optimized Linux Distribution — A minimal, immutable Linux distribution purpose-built for Kubernetes.
🌐 Networking, Ingress & Traffic Management
- How To Troubleshoot Network Connections On Your Kubernetes Workloads — Practical tools and techniques for debugging pod-to-pod connectivity.
- How To Enable Access Logs on Openshift Default Routes — Enable HAProxy access logs on OpenShift default router for traffic visibility.
- Kiali 101: Understanding and Utilizing this Essential Istio Service Mesh Management Tool — Visualize and manage your Istio service mesh with Kiali.
- Secure Your Services with Istio: A Step-by-Step Guide to Setting up Istio TLS Connections — Step-by-step guide to configuring mTLS and TLS origination with Istio.
- How To Enable Sticky Session on Your Kubernetes Workloads using Istio? — Configure session affinity in Kubernetes workloads using Istio destination rules.
- Enhancing Service Mesh DNS Resolution with Istio’s Proxy DNS Capability: Benefits and Use-Cases — Use Istio proxy DNS capability for improved service mesh resolution.
- Using Kubernetes Ingress on OpenShift: How Routes Are Generated and When to Use Each — How OpenShift auto-generates routes from Ingress resources and when to use each.
- Problems with Ingress in Kubernetes: Complexity, Incompatibilities, and the Future with Gateway API — The limitations of Ingress and why Gateway API is the future.
🗂 Scheduling & Workload Placement
- Kubernetes Autoscaling: Learn How to Scale Your Kubernetes Deployments Dynamically — The fundamentals of HPA and how to dynamically scale deployments based on metrics.
- Enhanced AutoScaling Options for Event-Driven Applications — Scale beyond CPU/memory with event-driven autoscaling patterns.
- Why You Shouldn’t Add a Resource Quota Using The Limit Value? — Why setting limits equal to requests can backfire in production.
- Scale To Zero And From Zero in Your Kubernetes Cluster — Enable scale-to-zero for serverless-style workloads with KNative or OpenFaaS.
- Kubernetes Autoscaling 1.26: A Game-Changer for KEDA Users? — Breaking changes and new features in Kubernetes 1.26 autoscaling APIs.
- Unlocking Performance and Adaptability: Exploring Kubernetes Vertical Autoscaling — When VPA makes sense and how to configure it for right-sizing workloads.
- Optimizing Kubernetes Scheduling with Node Affinity Rules: Trade-offs and Best Practices — Control pod placement with node affinity rules and understand the trade-offs.
🔐 Security, Policies & Governance
- Harbor Registry: How to use to increase security on your platform? — Use Harbor as a secure, enterprise-grade container registry with vulnerability scanning.
- How To Inject Secrets in Pods To Improve Security with Hashicorp Vault in 5 Minutes — Inject secrets into pods using Hashicorp Vault sidecar injector.
- Trivy: Get To Scan Docker Local Images with Success — Scan container images locally with Trivy for known vulnerabilities.
- Ensuring Kubernetes Security: A Collaborative Journey for Developers and Operators — Security is a shared responsibility: best practices for dev and ops alignment.
- Safeguarding Your Servers: Preventing Information Disclosure with Istio Service Mesh — Prevent server header leaks using Istio EnvoyFilters.
- Enhancing Container Security: The Vital Role of ReadOnlyRootFilesystem — Harden containers by running with an immutable root filesystem.
- Boosting Kubernetes Security: Exploring KubeSec – A Must-Have Tool for Safeguarding Your Cluster — Static analysis for Kubernetes manifests to catch security misconfigurations early.
- Kubernetes Policy Enforcement: Understanding Pod Security Admission (PSA) — Understand PSA and how to enforce security standards at the namespace level.
- Kyverno: A Detailed Way of Enforcing Standard and Custom Policies — Policy-as-code with Kyverno for mutation, validation, and generation.
- Extending Kyverno Policies: Creating Custom Rules for Enhanced Kubernetes Security — Extend Kyverno with custom policies tailored to your organization.
- Integrating Kyverno CLI into CI/CD Pipelines with GitHub Actions — Shift-left policy enforcement by integrating Kyverno CLI into CI/CD pipelines.
🧠 Storage, State & Platform Dependencies
- AccessModes Eases The Path To Stateful Workloads Running on Kubernetes Platform — Understand RWO, RWX, and ROX access modes for persistent volumes.
- Untangling Reclaim Policies for Persistent Volume in Kubernetes — Choose the right PV reclaim policy to avoid data loss or orphaned resources.
- MinIO: Multi Cloud Object Storage — Deploy MinIO as a self-hosted, S3-compatible object store for Kubernetes.
- Grafana Loki and MinIO: A Perfect Match! — Configure Grafana Loki to use MinIO for cost-effective log storage.
- MinIO in Maintenance Mode: What It Means for the Community Edition, OEM Users, and Open-Source Alternatives — What MinIO maintenance mode means and which open-source S3 alternatives exist.
🛠 Developer Tools
- Kubernetes Dashboard Alternatives in 2026: Best Web UI Options After Official Retirement
- Discover Your Perfect Tool for Managing Kubernetes — A curated list of tools for managing Kubernetes clusters.
- How To Set Up an Openshift Local Cluster ? — Set up a local OpenShift cluster for development and testing.
- From Docker Desktop to Rancher Desktop: Quick and Simple — Migrate from Docker Desktop to Rancher Desktop without losing productivity.
- Top 6 Kubectl Commands and Kubectl Tips — Essential kubectl commands and productivity tips for daily operations.
- OpenLens vs Lens: A New Battle Starts in January 2023 — The fork that split the community: differences and migration path.
🛠 Operations, Troubleshooting & Production Reality
- Kubernetes Service Discovery for Prometheus — Learn how Prometheus auto-discovers targets in Kubernetes using native service discovery mechanisms.
- EKS Hybrid Series: Changing namespaces of serverless deployment — Manage namespace placement in EKS hybrid deployments.
- Prometheus Metrics: How to change the Metric Name? — A practical guide to renaming and relabeling Prometheus metrics for better clarity.
- AWS Prometheus Service to Provide More Availability to Your Monitoring Solution — Leverage AWS Managed Prometheus for a fully managed, HA monitoring backend.
- CICD Docker: Top 3 Reasons Why Using Containers In Your DevSecOps pipeline — Top reasons to containerize your CI/CD pipeline stages.
- Lens Could Be the Tool That You Were Missing to Master Kubernetes-Based Development and Management — Lens: a powerful IDE for Kubernetes cluster management.
- Prometheus Storage: How does it work and why is this important? — Deep dive into how Prometheus stores time-series data and why it matters for capacity planning.
- Prometheus Storage: How optimize the disk usage? — Techniques to reduce Prometheus disk footprint without losing critical metrics.
- How to analyze and improve the size of your docker images? — Analyze and shrink Docker images for faster pulls and reduced storage.
- How to Scan Docker Images in Your Local Machine — Scan Docker images locally before pushing to registries.
- Prometheus Storage: Optimize the Disk Usage on Your Deployment With These Hacks — Actionable hacks to squeeze more value from your Prometheus storage.
- Loki vs ELK: A Light Alternative to the ELK stack — Why Loki is a lightweight alternative to ELK for log aggregation.
- Kubernetes Health Check: How to Make it Simpler — Automate cluster health audits with KubeEye.
- Level-Up Your Deployment Strategy with Canarying in Kubernetes — Implement progressive delivery with canary deployments in Kubernetes.
- Promtail: The Missing Link Logs and Metrics for your Monitoring Platform. — Ship logs from pods to Loki using Promtail.
- Portainer: A Visionary Software and an Evolution Journey — A unified management UI for Docker and Kubernetes environments.
- Why is the Prometheus Agent Mode So Great? — Why remote-write-only mode is a game changer for federated monitoring setups.
- My Take On the Kubernetes Certification (CKAD) — Personal insights and tips from passing the CKAD certification.
- How To Improve Your Chances To Master Your Kubernetes Certification (CKAD) Exam? — Preparation strategies to maximize your CKAD exam success.
- Prometheus ServiceMonitor and PodMonitor: Don’t Miss The New Concepts! — Master the Prometheus Operator CRDs for declarative scrape target configuration.
- How To Improve Your Kubernetes Workload Development Productivity — Develop Kubernetes workloads locally while connected to a remote cluster.
- Top 3 Options To Deploy Scalable Loki On Kubernetes — Deployment options for running Loki at scale in Kubernetes.
- Empower Log Aggregation in Kubernetes with BanzaiCloud Logging Operator — Declarative log routing with the BanzaiCloud Logging Operator.
- BanzaiCloud Logging Operator in Kubernetes Simplified in 5 minutes. — Get started with BanzaiCloud Logging Operator in 5 minutes.
- Multi-Stage Dockerfile: Awesome Approach To Optimize Your Container Size — Use multi-stage builds to produce lean, production-ready images.
- Grafana Alerting vs AlertManager: A Comparison of Two Leading Monitoring Tools — Compare Grafana Alerting and Prometheus Alertmanager for your stack.
- Maximizing Kubernetes Configuration Quality with Kubeconform: A Powerful Utility for Seamless Kubernetes Validation and Management — Validate Kubernetes manifests against schemas for early error detection.
- Exploring Ephemeral Containers in Kubernetes: Unveiling a Powerful Debugging Tool — Debug running pods without restarting them using ephemeral containers.
🧭 How to Use This Kubernetes Hub
New to Kubernetes in production?
Start with Ingress and scheduling articles — they expose the most common architectural pitfalls.
Running Kubernetes at scale?
Focus on policy enforcement, traffic management, and storage decisions.
Designing platforms, not just apps?
Pay attention to ecosystem boundaries (Ingress, storage, security tools).
❓ FAQ
Is Kubernetes always the right choice for microservices?
No. Kubernetes solves orchestration problems, not architectural ones. Poor service design remains poor service design.
Why is Ingress so problematic in Kubernetes?
Because it tries to standardize L7 routing without standardizing implementations, leading to fragmentation.
When should I care about scheduling rules like node affinity?
As soon as workloads have performance, compliance, or availability constraints.
🔗 Related Topics
- Helm & application packaging
- Service Mesh & traffic policies
- CI/CD and policy enforcement