Kubernetes Production Readiness Checklist

Intro: What “Production-Ready” Really Means

Just because your app runs on Kubernetes doesn’t mean it’s production-ready. Running in production means handling failures gracefully, securing your workloads, avoiding noisy neighbors, and maintaining operational visibility.

This checklist walks through the must-haves for running Kubernetes clusters at scale without firefighting at 2 a.m.

Security & Isolation First

Kubernetes security requires multiple layers of defense. Here's how the security model works in a production cluster:

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In multi-tenant clusters or any environment handling sensitive workloads, security and isolation are non-negotiable.

Pod Security Standards (PSS)

Enforce Kubernetes' built-in Pod Security Standards to control what workloads can run.

• Disallow privileged containers
• Restrict host networking and filesystem mounts
• Enforce runAsNonRoot for all containers

Example: Enforcing PSS via Namespace Labels

apiVersion: v1
kind: Namespace
metadata:
  name: production
  labels:
    pod-security.kubernetes.io/enforce: restricted

NetworkPolicies for Tenant Isolation

Network policies provide microsegmentation within your cluster. Here's how to implement proper network isolation:

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By default, all Pods in a Kubernetes cluster can talk to each other — which is not production-ready.

• Use NetworkPolicies to explicitly allow necessary traffic
• Block cross-tenant traffic to reduce lateral movement risks

Example: Allow Only App → Database Traffic

apiVersion: networking.k8s.io/v1
kind: NetworkPolicy
metadata:
  name: allow-db-access
spec:
  podSelector:
    matchLabels:
      app: my-app
  policyTypes:
    - Egress
  egress:
    - to:
        - podSelector:
            matchLabels:
              app: my-db
      ports:
        - protocol: TCP
          port: 5432

Reliability Features for Production

Kubernetes gives you powerful tools to keep apps highly available and resilient.

PodDisruptionBudgets (PDBs)

Prevent cluster upgrades or node drains from taking down your entire service.

apiVersion: policy/v1
kind: PodDisruptionBudget
metadata:
  name: my-app-pdb
spec:
  minAvailable: 2
  selector:
    matchLabels:
      app: my-app

Resource Requests & Limits

Never deploy workloads without resource requests and limits. Without them, noisy neighbors can starve critical workloads.

resources:
  requests:
    cpu: "500m"
    memory: "512Mi"
  limits:
    cpu: "1"
    memory: "1Gi"

HPA & VPA for Auto-Scaling

Use Horizontal Pod Autoscalers (HPA) to scale Pods based on demand and Vertical Pod Autoscalers (VPA) for right-sizing container resources automatically.

kubectl autoscale deployment my-app --cpu-percent=70 --min=3 --max=10

Operational Safeguards

Production Kubernetes requires robust operational practices. Here's a comprehensive view of the operational stack:

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Managing configs, secrets, and operational safety nets is key in production.

ConfigMaps & Secrets Management

• Use ConfigMaps for environment-specific settings
• Use Secrets for sensitive data (integrate with tools like Vault or AWS Secrets Manager)
• Enable encryption at rest for Secrets in etcd

Observability Sidecars

Your cluster isn’t production-ready if you can’t see what’s happening.

• Prometheus + Grafana → Metrics & alerting
• Fluent Bit / Fluentd → Centralized logging
• Jaeger / OpenTelemetry → Distributed tracing

Example: Prometheus Sidecar Annotation

metadata:
  annotations:
    prometheus.io/scrape: "true"
    prometheus.io/port: "8080"

Common Pitfalls to Avoid

Key Takeaways

Before taking Kubernetes workloads to production, make sure you:

• Enforce security policies (PSS + NetworkPolicies)
• Set resource requests/limits and configure PDBs
• Automate scaling using HPA/VPA
• Centralize logs, metrics, and traces for observability
• Avoid anti-patterns like :latest images and missing probes

A production-ready Kubernetes setup lets you deploy faster, recover from failures seamlessly, and operate securely at scale.