Kubernetes has a reputation. It's powerful, flexible, and — let's be honest — confusing. After setting up 40+ clusters for clients, here's what I wish someone had told me at the start.
Start with managed Kubernetes
Don't run your own control plane unless you have a very good reason. EKS, GKE, AKS — pick one. You're paying for someone else to handle the hard parts, and that's exactly what you want.
Namespaces are your friends
Use namespaces to separate environments, teams, or services. It's not just organization — it's security. A misconfigured pod in one namespace can't touch another.
Don't over-engineer your Helm charts
Helm is great. But I've seen teams spend weeks building the perfect chart abstraction, only to realize they have 3 services. Start simple. Abstract later, if you need to.
- Use
kustomizefor environment-specific overrides - Keep base charts minimal
- Don't template everything — some things should just be YAML
Monitoring is not optional
Prometheus + Grafana is the standard for a reason. Set it up on day one. You'll thank yourself when something breaks at 3am and you can actually see what's happening.
The best Kubernetes cluster is the one you don't have to think about.
If you're struggling with Kubernetes, or thinking about adopting it and feeling overwhelmed — reach out. We've been there, and we can help.