Learn Kubernetes Weekly issue 172 · 25 Feb 2026

Google Cloud Shell Escape, Azure CNI Pod Subnet, How I Think About Kubernetes, Sidecar FROM 421MB to 90MB, Manage Resources as One Unit

This newsletter is brought to you by Kubex — Automated Resource Optimization for Kubernetes, GPUs and AI Workloads

We released a new ebook: "Right-Sizing GPUs in Kubernetes"!

Gulcan and I have been busy over the past months dissecting how to make sense of GPU monitoring and metrics.

The eBook explores in detail how:

  • Kubernetes, nvidia-smi, and workload each have different views of GPU utilization.
  • A 54% GPU Util is a misleading signal for GPU yield.
  • Collecting the right metrics and making sense of them.
  • GPU waste cascades into CPU and memory costs.

We also included several flowcharts to help you diagnose utilization and yield.

Kubex sponsored the book, and you can grab your free copy here.

— Dan

Articles

  1. Google Cloud Shell Container Escape

    medium.com

    This article provides an in-depth analysis of Google Cloud Shell's internal mechanisms and demonstrates two successful container escape techniques from a privileged Docker container.

  2. Kubernetes Resource Management ebook for Platform Owners

    kubex.ai

    Platform teams face a resource paradox: clusters full of unused capacity while developers demand more.

    This guide shows how to manage Kubernetes resources at scale without slowing teams down or wasting budget.

    sponsored

  3. Azure Kubernetes Service Deep Dive Into Azure CNI Pod Subnet

    medium.com

    This article explains the trade-offs of Azure CNI Pod Subnet in AKS with two IP allocation modes:

    • Dynamic IP Allocation, where blocks of 16 IPs are assigned dynamically
    • Static Block Allocation, where all IPs are reserved upfront.

  4. How I think about Kubernetes

    garnaudov.com

    This article explains how to think about Kubernetes as a runtime for declarative infrastructure with a type system rather than just a container orchestrator.

  5. How We Shrunk a Kubernetes Sidecar from 421MB to 90MB (With No OS Inside)

    medium.com

    This article explains how to reduce a Kubernetes sidecar container from 421MB to 90MB by building a statically linked Go binary and using FROM scratch base image instead of Alpine Linux.

  6. Kube Resource Orchestrator: Manage any group of resources as one unit

    medium.com

    This article shows how KRO manages ephemeral test environments as single Kubernetes API objects by orchestrating resource deployment in dependency order, with readiness conditions and a unified status across namespace, frontend, backend, and database.

[FREE eBook] Right-Sizing GPUs in Kubernetes

A GPU cluster can look 100% allocated while delivering 30% yield.

This book shows you how to measure the gap and close it.

→ Grab your copy

[FREE eBook] Right-Sizing GPUs in Kubernetes

Tutorials

  1. Data Streaming in Practice (Kafka + Flink): Building a Flight Baggage Tracking System

    medium.com

    This tutorial teaches how to build an end-to-end real-time baggage tracking system using Kafka for event streaming, Flink for state processing, ClickHouse for analytics, and Grafana for visualization on Kubernetes.

  2. Building a Home Kubernetes Cluster with 3 Raspberry Pis

    medium.com

    This tutorial teaches how to build a home Kubernetes cluster using three Raspberry Pi 4 devices for hands-on learning and experimentation.

  3. Scaling AI Document Processing on Kubernetes with Ray & KubeRay

    medium.com

    This tutorial teaches how to process large AI documents on Kubernetes using Ray and KubeRay by splitting PDFs into chunks and running parallel GPU OCR tasks.

  4. From Chaos to 99.9% Uptime: Rebuilding a Kubernetes Platform for GPU Workloads

    medium.com

    This case study describes rebuilding a fragile Kubernetes infrastructure into a production-grade platform for GPU-based ML workloads, improving deployment frequency from weekly to 10+ times daily.

From ECS to Kubernetes: A Real Migration Story

Migrating from ECS to Kubernetes sounds straightforward — until you hit spot capacity failures, firewall rules silently dropping traffic, and memory metrics that lie to your autoscaler.

Radosław Miernik, Head of Engineering at aleno, walks through a real production migration: what broke, what they missed, and the fixes that made it work.

In this interview:

  • Running Flux and Argo CD together — Flux for the infra team, Argo CD's UI for developers who don't want to touch YAML
  • How the wrong memory metric caused OOM errors, and why switching to jemalloc cut memory usage by 20%
  • Splitting WebSocket and API containers into separate deployments with independent autoscaling

Four months of migration, over 100 configuration changes in the first month, and a concrete breakdown of what platform work looks like when you can't afford downtime.

From ECS to Kubernetes: A Real Migration Story

Kubernetes jobs

    • Machine Learning Engineer with Scout Motors

    • Salary: $120K to $145K a year

    • Location: based in the office in Charlotte, NC, USA

    • Tech stack: Kubernetes, On-premise, Docker, Kubernetes, GitHub Actions, Gitlab, GitHub, Terraform, AWS S3, NumPy

    • Software Engineer with Roku

    • Salary: $275K to $300K a year

    • Location: remote from

    • Tech stack: Kubernetes, AWS, GCP, EKS, GKE, Kubernetes, Java

    • Platform Engineer with Robinhood

    • Salary: $200K to $235K a year

    • Location: based in the office in Toronto, CA

    • Tech stack: Kubernetes, Kubernetes, Go

    • System Administrator with Relativity Space

    • Salary: $128K to $176K a year

    • Location: remote from

    • Tech stack: Kubernetes, Azure, GCP, AWS, On-premise, VMware vSphere, VMware, Kubernetes, Ceph, Portworx

    • DevSecOps Engineer with Roblox

    • Salary: $216.68K to $269.17K a year

    • Location: based in the office in San Mateo, CA, USA

    • Tech stack: Kubernetes, EKS, GKE, AKS, Kubernetes, AWS ECS, Nomad, Chef, AWS S3, Shell

Discover more Kubernetes jobs on Kube Careers →

Code & tools

  1. Wozz: Kubernetes Cost Tool

    github.com/WozzHQ

    Wozz helps engineering teams reduce Kubernetes spend through two approaches:

    • Analyzes pull requests for resource changes and comments with cost impact before merge.
    • Scans running clusters to identify over-provisioned pods and wasted resources.

  2. Over-Engineered GitOps Homelab

    github.com/theepicsaxguy

    This repo is a GitOps-driven homelab blueprint where all infrastructure and apps are declaratively managed with tools like Talos, OpenTofu, ArgoCD, Cilium, Longhorn, Authentik, cert-manager, and more.

  3. Purr: kubectl TUI

    github.com/tapcraft-io

    Purr is a TUI wrapper for kubectl that provides completions for commands, resource caching with watch-based updates, persistent command history with fuzzy search, and an interactive file picker.

  4. CasaVue: Ingress Catalog

    github.com/czoczo

    K8sVue is a tool that simplifies the management of Kubernetes Ingress resources by providing a customizable progressive web application.

  5. MySQL Cluster Operator for Kubernetes

    github.com/cybozu-go

    MOCO provides a reliable and efficient way to deploy, manage, and maintain MySQL databases in a containerized environment.

    MOCO supports GTID-based semi-synchronous replication, ensuring high availability and data consistency.

Other interesting projects:

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Upcoming Kubernetes events

  1. Feb

    25

    Modernize & Scale: Why and how to migrate your workloads to GKE

    Online webinar organized by Google.

    • This is a virtual event

    • This is a free event.

  2. Feb

    26

    Introducing KRO: Simple Custom APIs for Kubernetes

    Online meetup organized by Cloud Native Tunis.

    • This is a virtual event

    • This is a free event.

  3. Feb

    28

    KubeFest 2026

    In-person conference organized by Cloud Native Rioja.

    • Location: Logroño, ES

    • This is a free event.

  4. Feb

    28

    Kubernetes Community Days Guadalajara 2026

    In-person conference organized by KCD Guadalajara.

    • Location: Guadalajara, MX

    • This event requires an entrance fee

  5. Mar

    4

    From Code to Cloud: An End-to-End Journey

    Online meetup organized by Cloud Native Rabat.

    • This is a virtual event

    • This is a free event.

  6. Mar

    5

    Make autoscaling boring by improving how HPA, VPA & Karpenter make decisions

    Online webinar organized by Kubex.

    • This is a virtual event

    • This is a free event.

  7. Mar

    12

    Advanced Kubernetes course

    Online workshop organized by LearnKube.

    • This is a virtual event

    • This event requires an entrance fee

Discover more Kubernetes events on Kube Events →

Thanks to our sponsors who make Kube Today possible

  • LearnKube
  • Akamai
  • Fairwinds
  • Densify
Find out more about being a sponsor →

Kubernetes call for papers

  1. 3

    days

    Container Days Hamburg 2026

    The Call For Paper is open until 28 February 2026 at UTC. More info →

    • Location: Hamburg, DE

    • In-person conference organized by Container Days.

    • The conference starts on the 4 September 2026.

    • Apply here

  2. 9

    days

    Cloud Native Days Italy 2026

    The Call For Paper is open until 6 March 2026 at UTC. More info →

    • Location: Bologna, IT

    • In-person conference organized by CND Italy.

    • The conference starts on the 18 May 2026.

    • Apply here

  3. 23

    days

    Cloud Native Days Amsterdam

    The Call For Paper is open until 20 March 2026 at UTC. More info →

    • Location: Amsterdam, NL

    • In-person conference organized by Cloud Native Amsterdam.

    • The conference starts on the 22 May 2026.

    • Apply here

  4. 6

    days

    Kubernetes Community Days Panama 2026

    The Call For Paper is open until 3 March 2026 at UTC. More info →

    • Location: Panama City, PA

    • In-person conference organized by KCD Panama.

    • The conference starts on the 20 April 2026.

    • Apply here

  5. 3

    days

    Kubernetes Community Days Kochi 2026

    The Call For Paper is open until 1 March 2026 at UTC. More info →

    • Location: Kochi, IN

    • In-person conference organized by KCD Kochi.

    • The conference starts on the 11 April 2026.

    • Apply here

  6. 35

    days

    Kubernetes Community Days Czech & Slovak - Prague 2026

    The Call For Paper is open until 1 April 2026 at UTC. More info →

    • Location: Bratislava, SK

    • In-person conference organized by KCD Czech & Slovak.

    • The conference starts on the 21 May 2026.

    • Apply here

  7. 2

    days

    Kubernetes Community Days Kuala Lumpur 2026

    The Call For Paper is open until 28 February 2026 at UTC. More info →

    • Location: Kuala Lumpur, MY

    • In-person conference organized by KCD Kuala Lumpur 2026.

    • The conference starts on the 27 June 2026.

    • Apply here

  8. 32

    days

    KubeCon + CloudNativeCon Japan 2026

    The Call For Paper is open until 29 March 2026 at UTC. More info →

    • Location: Yokohama, JP

    • In-person conference organized by Linux Foundation.

    • The conference starts on the 30 July 2026.

    • Apply here

  9. 4

    days

    Kubernetes Community Days Istanbul 2026

    The Call For Paper is open until 2 March 2026 at UTC. More info →

    • Location: İstanbul, TR

    • In-person conference organized by KCD Istanbul.

    • The conference starts on the 15 May 2026.

    • Apply here

Until next time!

— Gulcan

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