Kubernetes in production: best practices for 2025
Kubernetes has become the de facto standard for container orchestration, but production deployments remain challenging. According to the CNCF Annual Survey, 78% of organizations run Kubernetes in production, yet only 40% feel confident in their deployments. Mastering production K8s requires attention to security, reliability, and operational excellence.
The state of Kubernetes
According to Datadog's Container Report, organizations running Kubernetes at scale see 45% improvement in deployment frequency but also 3x increase in operational complexity.
Cluster architecture patterns
Single Cluster
Simpler but single point of failure, limited scale
Multi-Cluster
Regional clusters for HA and compliance
Hub-Spoke
Central management, edge workloads
Service Mesh
Cross-cluster service connectivity
GitOps
Declarative cluster management
Platform Team
Internal Kubernetes platform
Start Simple: Don't over-engineer from day one. Start with a single cluster, add complexity only when needed. Many successful organizations run production on one well-managed cluster.
Security hardening
Cluster Security
RBAC, network policies, pod security standards, secrets management.
Container Security
Image scanning, runtime security, non-root containers.
Network Security
Network policies, service mesh mTLS, ingress TLS.
Data Security
Secrets encryption at rest, volume encryption.
Supply Chain
Image signing, SBOM, provenance verification.
K8s Security Control Adoption (%)
Resource management
Resource Configuration Best Practices
| Feature | Basic | Production | Optimized |
|---|---|---|---|
| Resource Requests Set | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Resource Limits Set | ✗ | ✓ | ✓ |
| QoS Classes Used | ✗ | ✓ | ✓ |
| PDB Configured | ✗ | ✓ | ✓ |
| HPA Enabled | ✗ | ✓ | ✓ |
| VPA Considered | ✗ | ✗ | ✓ |
Requests
Minimum resources guaranteed, used for scheduling
Limits
Maximum resources allowed, prevents noisy neighbors
QoS
Guaranteed, Burstable, BestEffort classes
HPA
Scale pods based on metrics
VPA
Right-size resource requests automatically
Cluster Autoscaler
Scale nodes based on pending pods
High availability configuration
HA Configuration Components
Probe Configuration: Misconfigured liveness probes are a leading cause of production incidents. Start with readiness probes only, add liveness probes carefully, and set appropriate timeouts.
Observability stack
Metrics
Prometheus for metrics collection, Grafana for visualization. USE and RED methods.
Logs
Centralized logging with Loki, Elasticsearch, or cloud provider. Structured JSON logs.
Traces
Distributed tracing with Jaeger, Tempo, or cloud APM. OpenTelemetry instrumentation.
Alerts
SLO-based alerting, PagerDuty integration, runbooks.
K8s Observability Tool Adoption (%)
Cost optimization
K8s Cost Optimization Impact
Right-Size
Match requests to actual usage
Spot/Preemptible
Use spot instances for stateless workloads
Autoscaling
Scale down during low demand
Namespace Quotas
Prevent resource sprawl
Cost Visibility
Tag and track costs by team/app
Reserved Capacity
Commit to baseline capacity
Deployment strategies
K8s Deployment Strategies
| Feature | Rolling Update | Blue-Green | Canary |
|---|---|---|---|
| Zero Downtime | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Quick Rollback | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Traffic Control | ✗ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Canary Testing | ✗ | ✗ | ✓ |
| Resource Efficient | ✓ | ✗ | ✓ |
| Simple Setup | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ |
GitOps workflow
Git as Source of Truth
All cluster state defined in Git repositories.
Pull-Based Deployment
Operator pulls changes, no push access to cluster.
Reconciliation
Continuous sync between Git and cluster state.
Drift Detection
Alert when actual state differs from desired.
FAQ
Q: Managed Kubernetes or self-hosted? A: Use managed (EKS, GKE, AKS) unless you have specific requirements. The operational burden of self-hosted K8s is significant. Even large organizations increasingly choose managed.
Q: How do we handle stateful workloads? A: Use managed databases when possible. If you must run stateful on K8s, use StatefulSets, persistent volumes, and operators designed for your database.
Q: What's the minimum production setup? A: 3 control plane nodes across AZs, 3+ worker nodes, network policies, RBAC, secrets encryption, monitoring, and backup strategy.
Q: How do we upgrade clusters safely? A: Test upgrades in staging first. Use managed K8s rolling upgrades. Have rollback plan. Upgrade one minor version at a time.
Sources and further reading
- CNCF Annual Survey
- Kubernetes Documentation
- Production-Grade Kubernetes by Josh Rosso
- Kubernetes Patterns
- CNCF Landscape
Run Production Kubernetes: Operating Kubernetes at scale requires expertise across infrastructure, security, and application architecture. Our team helps organizations build reliable, secure K8s platforms. Contact us to discuss your Kubernetes strategy.
Ready to improve your Kubernetes operations? Connect with our platform engineers to develop a tailored K8s strategy.
