Functions such as self-healing, statelessness, process orchestration, automated rollouts, and rollbacks are all quintessential for building and running a high-scale containerized cloud-native environment. As a solution, organizations often shift towards implementing a Kubernetes (K8) infrastructure that ideally provides unified logic and management for these functions.

Due to its open-source nature, K8 and its corresponding applications are pretty appealing for organizations as, ideally, it offers a large variety of readily available and premade tools. All that remains now is connecting them to each other and being honest. That is the core of the entire challenge organizations are currently facing.

Challenges

Blinded by all the benefits K8 promises organizations, organizations eventually have to come to terms with its complex configuration and realize that it might not be as simple as they initially predicted. But why is that? In short, there are five key reasons which we will address and discuss.

1. Building blocks

One of the main difficulties with K8 and its corresponding applications is that it is more of a set of building blocks that users are expected to customize themselves, instead of being a packaged solution.

2. Compatibility

Users with the intention to build on the K8 feature set often have a hard time finding the right solution for the right job. There is a vast amount of open source technologies to choose from yet no set path which guides them through and recommends the solutions suited for their needs.

3. Investment

For organizations lacking the time and resources to train or hire professionals, K8 can end up as being a hefty investment with no guarantee of success in the end. Only the hopes that the project will produce benefits, let alone a minimum viable product.

4. Know-how

K8 configuration and operation for someone unfamiliar with the technology comes off as a lengthy trial and error learning curve. Essentially it requires a different mind and skillset we got used to over the years due to its complex nature.

5. Adoption

K8 documentation does not necessarily cover all the essential production-related use cases, and the fact that there is no available commercial support further complicates adoption.

The solution lies in an opinionated approach.

Based on the challenges we stated, the real question is how to do a K8 project, right? The answer is simple, either allocate the time and resources to your teams and let them become self-made experts or seek the advice of those who already went through all this trouble and know what they are doing through their opinionated approach.

Both approaches are viable and beneficial but what makes them different is the available time and resources. If your organization has all the backing to let their internal teams experiment via trial and error, that allows that to happen.

If not, then utilize the help of external resources in the form of DevOps and SRE experts. Let them develop the K8 infrastructure you need right now and allow them to train your teams along the process.

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In conclusion

Kubernetes is a very appealing technology that offers a lot of benefits. Still, due to its complexity and resource limitations, it takes time for organizations to develop their in-house experts. As an alternative, there is no shame in turning to external professionals who will deliver the project in time while simultaneously educating and training your teams.

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For more on how this works in the field, check out our upcoming webinar.

Or reach out to one of our professional experts for a chat.