Kubernetes Done Right: Part 1 Technical and Operational Pitfalls

Kubernetes done right and what happens when it’s not.

Part 1: Technical and Operational Pitfalls

Kubernetes has revolutionised how organisations deploy, scale, and manage containerised applications. Yet despite its widespread adoption, many businesses find themselves struggling with complex deployments that are fragile, insecure, or simply don’t deliver the promised benefits. The reality is that whilst Kubernetes is incredibly powerful, it’s also remarkably easy to get wrong.

At DeeperThanBlue, we’ve encountered organisations that have invested significant time and resources into Kubernetes deployments, only to face persistent issues with performance, security vulnerabilities, or operational headaches that consume valuable developer time. The good news? Most of these challenges stem from common, preventable mistakes that can be addressed with the right expertise and approach.

This is the first in our two-part series on “Kubernetes Done Right.” Whilst this article focuses on the technical and operational pitfalls that can derail your Kubernetes journey, our follow-up will explore the financial implications of different deployment approaches—because getting Kubernetes right isn’t just about technical excellence, it’s about delivering genuine business value through cost-effective, scalable solutions.

In this post, we’ll examine the most frequent technical missteps we see in Kubernetes deployments and provide practical guidance on how to avoid them. From resource management and security configurations to monitoring and disaster recovery, we’ll help you build a foundation that ensures your containerised environment delivers robust performance, ironclad security, and the high availability your business demands.

Pitfall 1: Outdated Kubernetes Deployments

The good news here is that the organisation has recognised the benefits of moving to a containerised environment, but having deployed this environment, it may have been left to run unchecked. Perhaps the internal developer with the expertise to maintain the system has moved on, or the agency has walked away from the client leaving them high and dry. Without suitable maintenance through the application of security patches, for example, exposes these environments to the potential of attack by bad actors or leads to resource inefficiencies.

The people left behind to deal with the consequences are faced with something of a labyrinthine problem. They know it’s there, but the task of resolving it is overwhelming. So, they focus on the application layer and not the underlying problems.

Help is at hand: There are people out there with the skills to unpick and map the container maze, find the gremlins, apply updates and patches and get things running again. The right kind of expert will also suggest modernisation strategies to get your apps and systems running efficiently. These people can be found in Kubernetes Certified Service Providers, like DeeperThanBlue!

Pitfall 2: Fixed Resource Allocation

When businesses start on their containerisation journey, they sometimes start with a test and learn approach by starting out with a locally hosted bare metal environment. While this offers a low-cost way into containerisation, these deployments either become restrictive (taking a long time to configure and launch new containers to cope with demand) or costly (with redundant containers running regardless of demand).

Help is at hand: Spending time up-front with a trusted advisor to plan a containerised environment and migrating to a managed Kubernetes environment in the cloud will remove many of the headaches that would otherwise arise. Deploying in the cloud unlocks dynamic scaling capabilities. Nodes can be added or removed rapidly, often within minutes, allowing for true horizontal scaling to meet traffic surges. DeeperThanBlue can assist with such migrations, ensuring that the underlying infrastructure can seamlessly adapt to changing service demands and performance needs.

Pitfall 3: Inadequate High Availability Provision and Disaster Recovery

Another pitfall related to lack of planning and use of the right level of expertise is overlooking the need for High Availability services and Disaster Recovery processes.

High Availability (HA) refers to the design and implementation of systems that minimise downtime and maintain continuous service, even in the event of failures. In containerised environments, HA ensures that containers are replicated and orchestrated across multiple nodes, so applications remain accessible if individual components or servers fail.

Complementary to HA is Disaster Recovery (DR) which prepares for recovery after major, catastrophic events such as natural disasters or large-scale outages, typically involving more extended disruptions.

Despite it being one of the “key points” of Kubernetes, HA is often overlooked, possibly for cost reasons, with inadequate nodes and pods available to provide the essential backup resources to keep a site or application running.

Without a robust DR plan, a catastrophic event like a data centre outage could lead to prolonged business disruption, especially if, for example, install scripts that match your current configuration are unavailable or undocumented manual changes to the deployment have been made and backups aren’t available.

Help is at hand: At DeeperThanBlue we focus on implementing HA-compliant topologies for application deployment within Kubernetes clusters. We conduct rigorous “physical plug tests” to validate HA resilience. For DR, we use infrastructure-as-code tools like Terraform to script deployments, making the entire Kubernetes infrastructure reproducible in different cloud regions quickly, improving the recovery time objective (RTO).

Pitfall 4: Unoptimised Nodes and Containers

Organisations often fail to properly optimise their nodes and containers, for example by not setting container resource limits (for memory and CPU) correctly or setting them way over what their application actually needs. This wastes node resources and can prevent other applications from running, sometimes forcing unnecessary and costly additions of new nodes. Poor balancing of workloads, such as “pigeonholed servers” for specific applications, can also lead to some nodes being maxed out while others are underutilised.

Help is at hand: By running a detailed tuning exercise to assess actual pod resource usage and configure optimal memory and CPU limits it is possible to ensure the maximum number of pods are running in your node, and you get the best resource usage out of that node. This prevents wasted capacity and unnecessary expenses. It’s also possible reconfigure clusters to avoid unbalanced node utilisation.

And guess what? DeeperThanBlue offers this service too!

Pitfall 5: Bypassing native Kubernetes services

An overzealous developer might have configured the containerised environment so that applications communicate with pods in specific nodes based on their IP address. While this allows traceability of communication networks, if that node goes down, the whole service stops.

Help is at hand: Kubernetes incorporates native load balancing and resilience mechanisms, to prevent such a breakdown in the service. These mechanisms act as a stable abstraction layer, allowing external requests to be load-balanced across multiple instances of a pod, regardless of which node they are running on.

Of course, DeeperThanBlue is able to rectify such issues by creating proper Kubernetes services and directing traffic through them, ensuring that applications benefit from the platform’s built-in resilience.

Summary

This first blog post in our “Doing Kubernetes Right” series explores the technical and operational challenges that often prevent organisations from fully realising Kubernetes’ benefits. Despite its power, Kubernetes deployments can easily become fragile, insecure, or underperforming. DeeperThanBlue helps address these common, preventable mistakes.

We highlighted several key pitfalls and DeeperThanBlue’s solutions:

• Outdated Deployments: Leaving Kubernetes environments unchecked creates security risks and inefficiencies. DeeperThanBlue applies updates and suggests modernisation strategies.
• Fixed Resource Allocation: Starting with local bare metal can be restrictive or costly due to a lack of dynamic scaling. DeeperThanBlue assists in migrating to managed cloud Kubernetes for dynamic scaling capabilities.
• Inadequate High Availability (HA) and Disaster Recovery (DR): Overlooking HA/DR planning can lead to prolonged business disruption. DeeperThanBlue focuses on implementing HA-compliant topologies and uses infrastructure-as-code for reproducible DR.
• Unoptimised Nodes and Containers: Incorrect resource limits or poor workload balancing wastes node resources and forces costly additions. DeeperThanBlue conducts detailed tuning to configure optimal limits and reconfigure clusters for balanced utilisation.
• Bypassing Native Kubernetes Services: Configuring applications to communicate directly with pods via IP addresses creates single points of failure. DeeperThanBlue rectifies this by creating proper Kubernetes services for built-in load balancing and resilience.

Ultimately, this post provides practical guidance to build a robust foundation for strong performance, ironclad security, and the high availability your business demands.

In the next article, we’ll look at the costs of different Kubernetes deployment models—from managed services to self-hosted solutions. We’ll shine a light on those hidden expenses that can catch organisations off-guard and, most importantly, demonstrate how strategic optimisation can transform Kubernetes from a cost centre into a genuine competitive advantage.

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