Kubernetes Consulting

Kubernetes in production.
Done right.

EKS, GKE, or AKS — we design, build, migrate, and manage Kubernetes clusters. GitOps deployments, autoscaling, security hardening, and an honest call on whether you actually need K8s.

Get Your Free K8s Audit Do You Need Kubernetes?
11 min
Zero-downtime migration record
14×/day
Deploy frequency post-migration
40%
Avg compute cost reduction

Do You Actually Need Kubernetes?

Honest answer: not always. Here's how we think about it.

✅ Kubernetes makes sense when:

  • You have 10+ microservices to manage
  • You need consistent environments across dev/staging/prod
  • You're deploying multiple times per day
  • You need sophisticated autoscaling (HPA, VPA, KEDA)
  • You're running multi-region for resilience
  • You have dedicated platform/DevOps team capacity

❌ You might not need K8s if:

  • You have a monolith or 2-3 services — ECS/Cloud Run might be simpler
  • Your team is small (< 5 engineers) and wearing many hats
  • You deploy weekly or less
  • Your workloads are predictable (no burst traffic)
  • You're pre-product-market-fit and iterating fast

We'll tell you honestly. We've talked clients out of Kubernetes when simpler solutions fit better.

Kubernetes Services

Cluster Design & Setup

Production-grade clusters on EKS, GKE, or AKS. Networking, RBAC, observability, and security configured from day one.

  • Managed Kubernetes (EKS/GKE/AKS)
  • Networking (Calico, Cilium, VPC CNI)
  • Ingress (nginx, Traefik, ALB/NLB)
  • Service mesh (Istio, Linkerd)

Migration to Kubernetes

Move from VMs, ECS, Heroku, or bare metal to Kubernetes. Zero-downtime cutover plans with rehearsed rollback paths.

  • Application containerization
  • Helm chart creation
  • Traffic migration strategies
  • Database migration coordination

GitOps Deployment

ArgoCD or Flux for declarative deployments. Push to Git, cluster syncs automatically. Full audit trail, drift detection.

  • ArgoCD / Flux setup
  • Multi-environment promotion
  • Helm + Kustomize workflows
  • Progressive delivery (Argo Rollouts)

Cost Optimization

Right-size your clusters. Spot instances, autoscaling, resource limits — cut your Kubernetes bill by 30-50%.

  • Resource requests/limits tuning
  • HPA/VPA/KEDA autoscaling
  • Spot instance strategies
  • Cluster autoscaler optimization

Security Hardening

Network policies, pod security, RBAC, secrets management — lock down your clusters for production.

  • Network policies (zero-trust)
  • Pod security standards
  • RBAC design
  • External Secrets Operator + Vault

Observability & Troubleshooting

Prometheus, Grafana, Loki, Jaeger — full observability stack. Know what's happening before your users do.

  • Prometheus + Grafana
  • Loki for logs
  • Distributed tracing (Jaeger/Tempo)
  • Alerting & on-call integration

Kubernetes Results

11 min

Zero-downtime migration to GKE

Moved a fintech from hand-managed VMs to GKE with GitOps pipelines. Fully rehearsed cutover window of 11 minutes. Deploy frequency went from weekly to 14×/day.

GKE · ArgoCD · Terraform

-45%

Compute cost reduction on EKS

Optimized a SaaS company's EKS clusters: right-sized nodes, implemented Karpenter for autoscaling, moved non-critical workloads to Spot. $12k/month saved.

EKS · Karpenter · FinOps

100%

SOC 2 audit pass rate

Hardened an e-commerce platform's AKS clusters for SOC 2. Network policies, RBAC, audit logging, encrypted secrets — passed without findings.

AKS · Security · Compliance

Kubernetes FAQ

EKS, GKE, or AKS — which should we choose?

GKE: Best overall Kubernetes experience, most mature, excellent autopilot mode. EKS: If you're AWS-native and want deep integration with AWS services. AKS: If you're Azure-native or need Active Directory integration. We'll recommend based on your existing cloud and team.

How long does a Kubernetes migration take?

Simple apps (< 5 services): 2-4 weeks. Medium complexity: 4-8 weeks. Large migrations (20+ services, complex data): 2-4 months. We scope precisely before starting.

What about managed services like ECS or Cloud Run?

Great alternatives! ECS is simpler if you're AWS-only. Cloud Run is excellent for stateless services. We'll honestly tell you if these are better fits than Kubernetes.

How do you handle stateful workloads?

Carefully. For databases, we usually recommend managed services (RDS, Cloud SQL) over running them in K8s. For caches and queues, we use StatefulSets with proper PVCs and backup strategies.

Do we need a service mesh?

Probably not (yet). Service meshes like Istio add complexity. We only recommend them when you need advanced traffic management, mTLS between all services, or sophisticated observability. Most teams don't need it initially.

Ready for production Kubernetes?
Start with a free assessment.

We'll review your current setup, assess Kubernetes fit, and give you a clear path forward — even if that path doesn't include K8s.

Get Your Free K8s Assessment