With so many newcomers to the cloud-native computing space, it’s only to be expected that an ecosystem of certifications and accreditations has sprung up around Kubernetes over the years. And as the demand for K8s expertise continues to grow, so does the number of professionals seeking these certifications and accreditations.
In fact, you’d be hard-pressed to find an open source software project that has seen faster adoption than developers in the last decade. However, the K8s rise to ubiquity has not been without its challenges. And as you can imagine, with such a sudden influx of new developers, the adoption of K8s came with some growing pains.
Its widespread adoption has changed the way developers deploy and manage applications. However, the language still suffers from some common misconceptions — notably that it’s overly complex and cumbersome to produce, and that it’s not enterprise-ready.
Actually, ua Survey of IT experts for 2021, a staggering 100% of respondents whose organizations use or plan to use Kubernetes said they face adoption challenges, with the most commonly cited challenges being lack of IT resources, difficulty scaling, and struggling to keep up with advances in the underlying technology. However, what these findings fail to recognize is that most of these perceived shortcomings and challenges are not necessarily inherent to Kubernetes itself. Instead, as we will outline below, many of these challenges stem from some fundamental misunderstandings about how to approach and conceptualize the K8s system.
Mistake number 1
The single most common and damaging mistake developers make when working in Kubernetes is actually a mindset — the all-too-common mistake of introducing monolithic logic into the cloud native space. Kubernetes provides a wealth of abstractions and resources designed for a cloud-native ecosystem. If these resources are not utilized properly, it can lead to scalability issues, maintenance challenges, and inefficient deployment of applications and databases. This misconception can also encourage the belief that Kubernetes and the native cloud paradigm are unsuitable for enterprise use, when in reality it emphasizes the need to adapt application architectures to harness the full power of containers and orchestration.
To correct this common mistake, teams should incorporate strong architectural expertise into their development processes. Having engineers with cloud experience can guide teams to success and help them avoid common pitfalls. This approach emphasizes the importance of understanding and adapting to the unique characteristics of Kubernetes and cloud development.
Cloud-native thinking
The best way to avoid future mistakes is to foster a cloud-native mindset and experience within development teams. Encourage continuous learning and training on Kubernetes best practices and encourage teams to participate in the K8s community. Promote a culture of collaboration and knowledge sharing, allowing team members to benefit from each other’s experiences and insights. Regularly re-evaluate and update development practices to align with the evolving Kubernetes landscape.
Establishing high standards and quality control measures is also essential for successful Kubernetes development. Platform teams should enforce rigorous standards for everything deployed in Kubernetes, leading to higher availability, improved security, and improved performance. Operators can be valuable tools in this regard, automating the deployment of best-practice applications right out of the box.
Microservices is an architectural style that is increasingly being adopted by software development teams. Moving from monolithic to a set of small autonomous services is a good first step towards cloud native. Microservices architecture offers various advantages such as flexibility in using different technologies, ease of understanding, adaptability and scalability.
And with the growing interest in running databases on Kubernetes, this becomes even more of a challenge. It is critical that companies demand enterprise-grade functionality from operators, ensuring that databases on Kubernetes are deployed using modern and efficient approaches.
By understanding the most common pitfalls and seeking out more experienced developers, newcomers can adopt best practices, incorporate strong architectural expertise, set high standards, and leverage modern approaches to fully leverage the power of Kubernetes in a cloud-native ecosystem — ensuring a smooth journey into the world of Kubernetes development and paving the way more scalable, efficient and secure applications.