Kubernetes in Action: How to Make the Most of K8s Automation

Age-old questions are a thing of beauty.

What does it truly mean to be happy? What things hold you back from doing the things that you really want to do? Do our pets also have names for us, or is it just one-sided? 

These questions work to get our neurons firing and are a sure-fire way to kickstart a deep debate. But one age-old question remains buried beneath the rest, forever in the “yes” or “absolutely no” limbo:

“Is Kubernetes worth the time & investment for my company?”

With Kubernetes being the widely adopted platform it is today, many preach that this platform is a pioneer for next-generation tech. In contrast, others believe that Kubernetes itself is just a tech industry buzzword and doesn’t compete with tried and true solutions and platforms.

A Beginner’s Guide to Everything Kubernetes Offers (and more!)

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What is Kubernetes, and why is it used?

Well, here’s a quick guide on what is Kubernetes and why we use Kubernetes

Kubernetes is a container orchestration platform that automates software development and deployment.

This powerful platform encourages your applications and solutions to be self-sustaining and mainly automated by offering benefits such as:

• Self-healing clusters
• Automated scaling
• Automated deployment
• Automatic load balancing

And so much more.

What Kubernetes offers is a hyper-scalable and extremely flexible environment capable of speeding up software development processes tenfold while removing headache-inducing infrastructure procedures.

With the ability to keep up with applications of any size while responding to their demand loads precisely, Kubernetes is quickly becoming a favorite amongst the developer community, with huge corporations flocking towards this open-source technology for their projects, both existing and new.

The possibilities with Kubernetes are limitless, along with the time and cost savings depending on how your company utilizes this powerful technology.

Deploy and Develop From 0 to 60 in Seconds

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I’m sure you’ve seen ads for the car of your dreams before: insane horsepower, all-terrain environments, and features unbeknownst to anyone yet! Kubernetes is like the car of your dreams but with more features, faster output, and fewer wheels and maintenance.

Where Kubernetes shines in the time-saving department is with its intuitive automation.

According to a 2022 study done by Retool, engineering teams spend an “average of 33% of their time” developing infrastructure and internal tools that improve the quality of life for other teams. While this may seem efficient, only 67% of an engineer’s efforts are allocated toward developing outward-facing apps, solutions, and features; Kubernetes gives engineers full control of their time.

But how is Kubernetes used?

Kubernetes has the ability to automatically roll out or roll back updates to your application, depending on whether the update is truly beneficial to your application’s health. During this process, Kubernetes also closely monitors your application’s health, ensuring that nothing is ruined. If this doesn’t sound too impressive, imagine your fleets of engineers doing this, allocating a majority (if not all) of their time to determine whether a new update works and figuring out after hours of monitoring that it, in fact, does not.

And that’s only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to Kubernetes’ time-saving capabilities. 

Containers within Kubernetes have the ability to self-heal, meaning that if they were to fail, Kubernetes would automatically restart or kill the container, heal it, then put it out based on health requirements defined by the user. Anything that doesn’t meet these requirements is set on the sidelines. Instead of having to manually firefight, engineers could rely on the self-healing capabilities of these containers and instead work on developing the features and applications they actually want to work on.

And finally, the deployment quickening offered by Kubernetes. Everyone’s favorite cloud storage company, Box, looked to Kubernetes to expand and run their workloads across different cloud infrastructures. What they found was that after dissolving some of their infrastructures into microservices, Box’s deployment process was streamlined from 6 months to 4-5 days per push! Don’t just take it from us, though; check out their case study on the Kubernetes website

The only caveat to the time saved using Kubernetes is the time spent implementing this powerful technology, which can take a while, given its complexity. That being said, managed Kubernetes services, such as the one offered by us, take the time and complexity out of Kubernetes, letting you reap the benefits of this disruptive platform without the headache.

A Recession-Proof Investment (Not Financial Advice)

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There’s a common sentiment among people that some things are just too good to be true. In the case of Kubernetes, it’s too good, AND it’s true. 

You know that Kubernetes automation capabilities are able to save unparalleled amounts of time, but did you know that these same properties can also save you insane amounts of money? Here’s how:

Kubernetes autoscaling is one of the platform’s most well-known features, and for a good reason too. This feature automatically scales your clusters up or down in response to the present workload. This means that your cloud resources are only used when they have to be- no more, no less. A caveat to this is that as your application scales up, more and more resources will be used. However, you are in total control of this scaling process, meaning that resource consumption is up to your discretion. With managed Kubernetes, cluster control is even greater, and with a single UI to deploy and control, your experience and cost-savings will be more seamless.

Coupled with self-healing, automatic update rollouts and rollbacks, and load balancing, Kubernetes practically takes care of your clusters and applications for you, letting your engineers spend more time on features and less on infrastructure. You’re able to spend less on infrastructure management and maintenance and even less on engineering manpower if you choose the route of managed Kubernetes. 

On a national average, a Kubernetes engineer’s salary is $156,000, and a software engineer’s salary is $128,000. Utilizing a managed Kubernetes platform can help you bypass the salary costs and overall time and resources spent on onboarding a new engineer, all while getting a platform that puts you in total control of Kubernetes processes.

Spend less time and money behind the scenes working on infrastructure and more effort developing the frontlines and giving more to the people with Kubernetes!

Okay … so should my company use Kubernetes or not?

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After reading the two sections above, surely you’ve made up your mind on whether Kubernetes will benefit your business or not ... right?

Are you wondering, “Do I need Kubernetes?” or “Should I use Kubernetes?”

With the automation capabilities of Kubernetes and the unlocked potential of engineering teams, as a result, scaling your business and application deployment without limit is the first of Kubernetes’ many benefits. For one, your teams can develop faster, with fewer interruptions (and with Kubernetes being infrastructure free), basically anywhere! 

This is what Kubernetes can present to you today, but what about future prospects?

With a community of 5.6 million developers (and growing!) and 96% of organizations adopting the platform, Kubernetes and the enthusiasm around it has only skyrocketed these past two years. Interestingly enough, more organizations are looking towards less mature solutions to solve their problems and provide a new outlook towards how to approach scenarios, and with the capabilities and benefits of Kubernetes speaking for themselves, the platform is not going anywhere.

All too often, you read about artificial intelligence and machine learning and how they’re creating a path toward a sci-fi-like future. But what do you get when you throw Kubernetes in the mix? The growth of simplification and understandability. Utilizing artificial intelligence and machine learning to extract data, Kubernetes is able to act as a foundation for companies to pull and house data and streamline existing (and tedious) processes. 

If you’re interested in learning more about the future of Kubernetes, visit our blog!

There are some caveats to consider, however.

Does your current business strategy benefit from the implementation of Kubernetes directly? Is your team ready to include new technology into their tech stack? Do you have the necessary resources, including time, to implement and use Kubernetes?

With the managed Kubernetes alternative, companies get all the advantages of using Kubernetes without the hassle of implementation from the ground up. Long gone are the days of scratching your head in frustration, wondering why Kubernetes is so complex and why you have to put so much into implementing it. 

Managed Kubernetes by Lyrid, in particular, offers full control over your clusters, quick and easy deployment, and a 1-click solution marketplace that lets you continuously integrate preconfigured solutions in your apps- all in one platform.

Looking to power up your solution with Kubernetes? Click here to learn more about the managed Kubernetes powered by Lyrid!