Best Practices for Deploying Applications to Kubernetes

Deploying applications to Kubernetes? Follow these best practices to avoid downtime, improve scalability, and simplify operations.

1. Use Readiness and Liveness Probes

Probes help Kubernetes know when your app is healthy and ready to serve traffic.

livenessProbe:
  httpGet:
    path: /healthz
    port: 8080
  initialDelaySeconds: 5
  periodSeconds: 10

readinessProbe:
  httpGet:
    path: /ready
    port: 8080
  initialDelaySeconds: 5
  periodSeconds: 10

2. Configure Resource Requests and Limits

Avoid over/under-scheduling:

resources:
  requests:
    cpu: "250m"
    memory: "256Mi"
  limits:
    cpu: "500m"
    memory: "512Mi"

3. Use Rolling Updates, Not Recreate

Default behavior ensures zero-downtime:

strategy:
  type: RollingUpdate
  rollingUpdate:
    maxUnavailable: 1
    maxSurge: 1

4. Store Secrets Securely

Use Kubernetes Secrets and avoid hardcoding credentials:

env:
  - name: DB_PASSWORD
    valueFrom:
      secretKeyRef:
        name: db-secret
        key: password

5. Separate Config with ConfigMaps

Don’t bake configs into your container:

envFrom:
  - configMapRef:
      name: app-config

6. Use Labels and Selectors Properly

Make sure your labels are consistent and descriptive for management and observability:

metadata:
  labels:
    app: myapp
    tier: backend

7. Prefer Helm or Kustomize

Simplify templating and environment-based customization.

8. Monitor and Log Everything

Integrate with Prometheus, Grafana, and EFK or Loki for observability.

Conclusion

Follow these practices to ensure your Kubernetes workloads are scalable, resilient, and easy to maintain.