The Kubernetes Checklist for Teams Without a Platform Team
Most Kubernetes advice assumes you have a platform team: specialists who own upgrades, ingress, security policies, and the 2 a.m. pages. The teams I am writing for usually have three to ten engineers, one of whom “knows Kubernetes,” and no dedicated platform team. They depend on a cluster that nobody fully owns. I work in enterprise environments where platform teams are large and everything is…
The article outlines a minimal set of practices for a small team running Kubernetes in production without a dedicated platform team. It encourages treating Git as the source of truth for cluster configuration and workloads, using a single reconciliation tool for reproducible deployments, and establishing rollback paths. The rollout basics include using readiness probes, graceful termination, appropriate resource requests and limits, and PodDisruptionBudgets for replicable workloads.
Security should focus on RBAC scoped per human and workload, using secrets management tools, and blocking certain risks via admission policies. Observability involves using Prometheus dashboards for key metrics and alerts focused on user impact. Backups should be performed using tools like Velero, tested regularly, and documented for reconstruction procedures.
Upgrades should follow a regular schedule, not wait for forced updates, and include testing deprecated APIs. The article advises teams to focus on ownership, rollback capability, tested restores, and an upgrade cadence, minimizing unnecessary complexity.
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