Production Ready Container Orchestration

Kubernetes 1.8 - Production Ready Container Orchestration

Kubernetes had evolved from an interesting Google project to the de facto standard for container orchestration. Version 1.8 brought the stability and features that made enterprise adoption not just possible, but inevitable.

The introduction of stable RBAC was a game-changer for enterprise adoption. Finally, we could implement proper security controls and give teams access to exactly what they needed—nothing more, nothing less.

yaml

apiVersion: rbac.authorization.k8s.io/v1

kind: Role

metadata:

  namespace: development

  name: developer

rules:

- apiGroups: [""]

  resources: ["pods", "services", "configmaps"]

  verbs: ["get", "list", "create", "update", "patch", "delete"]

- apiGroups: ["apps"]

  resources: ["deployments", "replicasets"]

  verbs: ["get", "list", "create", "update", "patch", "delete"]

 

---

apiVersion: rbac.authorization.k8s.io/v1

kind: RoleBinding

metadata:

  name: developer-binding

  namespace: development

subjects:

- kind: User

  name: john.developer

  apiGroup: rbac.authorization.k8s.io

roleRef:

  kind: Role

  name: developer

  apiGroup: rbac.authorization.k8s.io

The ability to extend Kubernetes with custom resources opened up entirely new possibilities. We could now define our own domain-specific objects and let Kubernetes manage them with the same reliability as built-in resources.

yaml

apiVersion: apiextensions.k8s.io/v1beta1

kind: CustomResourceDefinition

metadata:

  name: applications.platform.company.com

spec:

  group: platform.company.com

  version: v1

  scope: Namespaced

  names:

    plural: applications

    singular: application

    kind: Application

 

---

apiVersion: platform.company.com/v1

kind: Application

metadata:

  name: user-service

spec:

  image: my-registry/user-service:v1.2.3

  replicas: 3

  database:

    type: postgresql

    size: 10Gi

  monitoring:

    enabled: true

    alerts:

      - name: high-error-rate

        threshold: 5%

With a stable foundation in place, the Kubernetes ecosystem exploded with tools and platforms. Helm for package management, Istio for service mesh, Prometheus for monitoring—suddenly we had a complete cloud-native toolkit.

running Kubernetes in production wasn't just possible—it was becoming easier than managing traditional infrastructure. The operational patterns were well-established, and the community had developed best practices for everything from cluster setup to application deployment.

What struck me most about this period was how Kubernetes changed organizational culture. Development and operations teams were forced to collaborate more closely. Infrastructure became code, and deployments became predictable, repeatable processes rather than weekend-ruining events.

Teams that embraced this shift found themselves deploying multiple times per day with confidence, while teams that resisted were still struggling with monthly deployment cycles fraught with risk and manual intervention.