Add new blog post: "10 Practical Tips to Tame Kubernetes"

Author: mattmattox

blog/content/post/kubernetes-tips.md

@@ -0,0 +1,216 @@
+---
+title: "10 Practical Tips to Tame Kubernetes"
+date: 2025-07-01T00:00:00-05:00
+draft: false
+tags: ["kubernetes", "tips", "devops", "helm", "rancher", "rbac", "monitoring", "secrets", "autoscaling"]
+categories:
+- Kubernetes
+author: "Matthew Mattox - [email protected]"
+description: "Ten practical, experience-driven tips for making Kubernetes more manageable in production—covering local dev, autoscaling, secrets, RBAC, Helm, monitoring, and more."
+more_link: "true"
+url: "/kubernetes-practical-tips/"
+---
+
+Kubernetes is a powerful tool for managing containerized workloads—but with great power comes great complexity. Whether you're just starting with Kubernetes or looking to tighten up your production clusters, these **10 practical tips (plus a bonus)** will help you reduce pain, improve resilience, and simplify day-to-day operations.
+
+<!--more-->
+
+## Tip 1: Choosing the Right Tool for Local Kubernetes Development
+
+Running full Kubernetes in production doesn’t mean your developers need to. Tools like:
+
+- **Rancher Desktop** (fully open-source, fast startup)
+- **Minikube** (flexible runtimes, heavier)
+- **Docker Desktop** (easy setup, licensing required)
+
+...can simulate Kubernetes locally. My go-to? Rancher Desktop—it’s lightweight, works natively, and has no licensing headaches.
+
+---
+
+## Tip 2: Configure Resource Requests, Limits, and Health Checks
+
+Don’t let bad neighbors tank your cluster. Always define:
+
+```yaml
+resources:
+  requests:
+    cpu: 250m
+    memory: 1Gi
+  limits:
+    cpu: 4000m
+    memory: 2Gi
+```
+
+And don’t forget health probes:
+
+```yaml
+readinessProbe:
+  tcpSocket:
+    port: 8080
+  initialDelaySeconds: 5
+  periodSeconds: 10
+```
+
+Liveness, readiness, and startup probes are critical to keeping apps healthy and restart logic sane.
+
+---
+
+## Tip 3: Use Horizontal Pod Autoscaling
+
+Autoscaling pods based on CPU or memory can prevent overprovisioning and improve uptime under load:
+
+```yaml
+apiVersion: autoscaling/v2
+kind: HorizontalPodAutoscaler
+spec:
+  scaleTargetRef:
+    kind: Deployment
+    name: php-apache
+  minReplicas: 1
+  maxReplicas: 10
+  metrics:
+    - type: Resource
+      resource:
+        name: cpu
+        target:
+          type: Utilization
+          averageUtilization: 50
+```
+
+Make sure `metrics-server` is deployed in your cluster for this to work.
+
+---
+
+## Tip 4: Use an Ingress Controller
+
+Avoid exposing apps with NodePorts or LoadBalancers. Use an **Ingress Controller** (NGINX, Traefik, etc.) and define clean ingress rules:
+
+```yaml
+apiVersion: networking.k8s.io/v1
+kind: Ingress
+spec:
+  rules:
+  - host: "app.example.com"
+    http:
+      paths:
+      - path: "/"
+        pathType: Prefix
+        backend:
+          service:
+            name: my-service
+            port:
+              number: 80
+```
+
+It reduces costs, simplifies traffic routing, and supports TLS termination.
+
+---
+
+## Tip 5: Use External Secrets Managers
+
+Kubernetes `Secret` objects are just base64-encoded. Use tools like:
+
+- 🔐 **Sealed Secrets** (Bitnami)
+- 🔐 **SOPS** + cloud KMS (AWS, GCP, Azure)
+- 🔐 **Helm Secrets** (SOPS under the hood)
+
+**Pro tip:** The best secret is one that’s encrypted even in Git.
+
+---
+
+## Tip 6: Use Helm to Manage YAML
+
+Tired of copy-pasting YAML across environments?
+
+- Bundle reusable components into Helm charts
+- Use `values.yaml` to inject environment-specific config
+- Simplify multi-service app deployments
+
+Helm brings version control, repeatability, and sanity.
+
+---
+
+## Tip 7: Use RBAC (and ABAC) for Access Control
+
+Only give users and workloads what they need:
+
+- Use **RBAC** to bind roles to users and service accounts
+- Use **ABAC** (if supported) for attribute-based controls
+
+Example ABAC policy:
+
+```json
+{
+  "user": "bob",
+  "namespace": "projectCaribou",
+  "resource": "pods",
+  "readonly": true
+}
+```
+
+Granular access = better security and auditability.
+
+---
+
+## Tip 8: Use a Cluster Management Platform
+
+Don’t manage everything manually. Tools like **Rancher** simplify:
+
+- Cluster provisioning
+- Role management and SSO
+- Application catalogs
+- Multi-cloud and hybrid operations
+
+Perfect for teams juggling dev, staging, and production across multiple clouds.
+
+---
+
+## Tip 9: Secure the Supply Chain
+
+After Log4Shell and SolarWinds, software supply chain security is non-negotiable.
+
+- Sign and verify images
+- Scan for CVEs in your CI/CD
+- Enforce image policies with Gatekeeper or Kyverno
+- Track provenance and build metadata
+
+You can’t patch what you didn’t build securely.
+
+---
+
+## Tip 10: Deploy a Monitoring Stack
+
+Kubernetes-native tools like **Prometheus + Grafana** help you:
+
+- Monitor cluster resource usage
+- Alert on pod failures or abnormal CPU/memory
+- Track trends over time
+
+Also consider integrating:
+
+- **Loki** for logs
+- **Tempo** for tracing
+
+And layer on alerting tools like Alertmanager or PagerDuty.
+
+---
+
+## Bonus Tip: Use a Cloud-Managed Database
+
+Don’t run MySQL in Kubernetes if you don’t have to.
+
+Use a managed DB like RDS, Cloud SQL, or Azure DB. Benefits:
+
+- Built-in HA and backups
+- No need to manage PVCs or failover logic
+- Reduced ops overhead
+
+Let your team focus on the application, not the persistence layer.
+
+---
+
+# [Final Thoughts](#final-thoughts)
+
+Kubernetes doesn’t have to be overwhelming. These tips help you build clusters that scale, recover, and self-heal—while maintaining security and reducing toil.
+
+Want to go even further? Tools like Rancher or other GitOps platforms bring consistency and sanity to managing Kubernetes at scale.