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Why Is Kubernetes Governance Critical to a Flourishing Cloud-Native Environment?

by Priya Kumari•

Introduction

Kubernetes, Docker, Mesos, and other cloud-native technologies are becoming increasingly popular among developers and IT teams. These technologies help you build containerized applications faster and easier than ever before.

But what happens when a company wants to deploy its production environment with these technologies?

According to a report by techgenix.com, with an exponential increase in the adoption of cloud-native technologies, Kubernetes has evolved as the undisputable leader for the container orchestration needs of organizations.

Furthermore, a report by Gartner reveals that the rate of standard adoption of Kubernetes will surge from nearly 30% to surpass even 75% across organizations in different verticals globally in 2022, and simultaneously the public cloud spending for enterprises will also grow to a whopping $304.9 billion. 

Consequently, it is imperative for all the progressive organizations to have substantial knowledge about Kubernetes governance and how it will impact the efficacy of the cloud-native environment within organizations.

In this post, we explore why Kubernetes governance is critical to a flourishing cloud-native environment. We’ll take a look at how companies can avoid common pitfalls when deploying their applications on Kubernetes.

What is Kubernetes?

If you’re not familiar with Kubernetes, it is a container orchestration platform that is used by organizations to deploy software components in a cluster of nodes. Kubernetes uses containers, which are like miniature virtual machines (VMs), to run applications on the same infrastructure that they were developed and tested on.

Kubernetes is complex, so when it comes to governance, there’s no one-size-fits-all solution. The level at which you choose to enforce policy will depend on your organization’s individual needs and how much control over the environment that it wants to maintain. At first glance, this may seem daunting, but thankfully there are four distinct levels of Kubernetes governance available for use today: Noop enforcement, Cluster Autoscaler (CAS) policies, Role Based Access Control (RBAC) policies, and Enterprise Grade Management Tools.

The Four Different Levels of Kubernetes

In order to understand how Kubernetes governance works, it is important to first understand a bit about the different levels of Kubernetes. Understanding these levels will also help you ask the right set of questions when putting Kubernetes into practice in a production environment within your organization, including the following:

  • Who owns the cluster?
  • How should logs be managed?
  • Should there be a separate account for each developer or should they all use their own individual accounts?
  • What are the roles and responsibilities of different teams in relation to that cluster?

So, let’s have a look what are those four levels:

Level 1 – Cluster Management

This level is more involved and requires a deep understanding of how K8s work. In order to manage multiple clusters in an organization, processes need to be standardized and designed with the following in mind.

  • Understand the different kinds of clusters, including:
  • Development/Test Cluster – Also known as a local cluster, this is where you do your development work. It allows you to test changes quickly and easily without having to worry about external resources or network latency issues.
  • Production Cluster – This is where your apps and services run in production after they’ve been released from the development environment.
  • Staging Environment (or Sandbox) – This is an environment similar to production, but it can be modified more easily because it’s not used for business purposes. For example, if you want to test out new features or UI/UX updates before deploying them on live servers, then staging environments are great places for doing so!

Level 2 – Application Deployment

This level relates to the developer experience. This is applicable to any type of application developer and includes production workloads as well as infrastructure code.

This level relates to the developer experience. This is applicable for any type of application developer, including production workloads as well as infrastructure code. The DevOps team should be enabled to deploy applications across environments with ease and confidence.

In order for an organization’s cloud-native environment to flourish, it’s important that there is a governance process in place that enables this type of flexibility while minimizing risk. Policies need to be defined around who can deploy what where and when; whether there are prerequisites in place before deployment takes place (such as staging); and if there are any restrictions on that deployment based on other policies or conditions (such as time of day). The same applies when it comes time to roll back a failed release or migrate from one version of an application to another version of an application

Level 3 – Infrastructure as Code

Here, IaC becomes very relevant. Going one step further, IaC needs to be codified so that all the declarative components can be if required, audited at any time in the future or have their validity verified during onboarding.

This is where the infrastructure as code (IaC) comes into play. IaC becomes very relevant here, as we go one step further than simply using declarative templates and start to codify them so that all the declarative components can be if required, audited at any time in the future or have their validity verified during onboarding.

The next level is where true governance begins to take hold: Level 3 – Infrastructure as Code – Here, IaC becomes very relevant. Going one step further, IaC needs to be codified so that all the declarative components can be if required, audited at any time in the future or have their validity verified during onboarding.

Level 4 – Enterprise Governance of Cloud-Native Technology

This means that there must be policies that define cloud-native patterns and how they should be applied to meet compliance standards. This will be important in multi-cloud deployments.

Summing Up the Criticality of Kubernetes Governance within Cloud-Native Environment

When you look at a Kubernetes environment, it may not seem like governance should matter much. It’s a tool for managing containers and services, right? Well, yes and no.

The truth is that governance is about consistency and repeatability, which are essential for all quality control processes. Governance ensures that policies are applied consistently in a repeatable way with an eye toward quality control-ensuring that the system works as intended and produces the intended results while managing risk appropriately along the way.

Final Words

We’re excited about Kubernetes governance because it’s an area that is still in its early stages of development. We’re confident that there will be many more tools and processes developed over time to help organizations manage their cloud-native environments effectively. As we’ve seen from our examples above, these tools can make managing your cluster much easier than before by allowing users to easily access relevant information when needed and enable teams across departments to collaborate on projects together seamlessly. They also help provide better visibility into how well things are running so you can take action accordingly when necessary!

Tell us your thoughts in the comments section.

Priya has about 7 years of experience in Market Research. Currently, she is working for Valasys Media, as a content writer, which is amongst the top B2B Media Publishers across the globe. She has been preparing several personalized reports for our clients & has done a lot of research on market segmentation, cluster analysis of audiences & inbound methodologies. She has worked with government institutes as well as corporate houses in several projects. She possesses various interests and believes in a data-driven approach to problem solving. She holds a post-graduation in science also writes extensively on all things about life besides marketing, science, data science and statistics. She is a firm believer in higher realities and that there’s always more to life than we understand. She is a psychic healer and a tarot practitioner, who believes in a spiritual way of living and practices Yoga and meditation. When not writing you can find her enjoying music or cooking. 

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