Learn Kubernetes Weekly issue 183 · 13 May 2026
Autoscaling Hid Our LLM Cost Regression, Mount Mayhem at Netflix, DocumentDB Automatic Failover, Skew Protection, Kubernetes VM Security Model
This newsletter is brought to you by LearnKube — master Kubernetes with hands-on training designed for engineers who want to learn the smart way.
“What Kubernetes-specific behavior will affect my app when I deploy, update, scale, restart, route, evict, or secure it?”
Gulcan and I prepared a Kubernetes production-readiness checklist to help teams answer that question before going live.
It includes:
- An interactive checklist with a detailed breakdown
- A downloadable PDF worksheet
- A GitHub repository that you can fork and make yours.
Check out the Kubernetes production readiness checklist!
— Dan
Articles
Autoscaling Hid Our LLM Cost Regression (85% → 4% Cache Hit Rate)
medium.com
This case study shows how a single RAG chunk size change collapsed vLLM prefix-cache hit rate from 85% to 4%, triggering an 80% GPU replica increase while latency stayed flat.
It also includes the fix: adding a two-phase cache replay gate in CI.
Mount mayhem at netflix: scaling containers on modern cpus
netflixtechblog.com
This article explains how Netflix traced severe container launch slowdowns to Linux mount lock contention, image layer mount storms, and CPU architecture differences while scaling containers on modern Kubernetes infrastructure.
DocumentDB on Kubernetes: Resilient, Highly Available Databases with Automatic Failover
abhishek1987.medium.com
This article explains how the DocumentDB Kubernetes Operator delivers high availability with automatic failover, replica promotion, and optional zone, region, and multi-cloud resilience.
We brought Skew Protection to your Kubernetes
blog.platformatic.dev
This article explains how Kubernetes skew protection routes traffic based on app version to prevent frontend and backend mismatches during deployments, and version-aware routing using the Gateway API.
Keeping Your Security Model Intact When Running VMs in Kubernetes
medium.com
This article shows how to maintain VM-level network security during KubeVirt live migration by using Calico labels and policy enforcement rather than node or pod IPs.
Vibe Coding a Kubernetes Media Server: What I Learned About AI-First Engineering
medium.com
This article explains how building a k3s media server with Claude Code exposed both the speed and the limits of AI-first engineering across GitOps, observability, storage tuning, and Kubernetes debugging.
Is your app actually ready for Kubernetes?
Kubernetes production-readiness checklist to help teams answer that question before going live.
It includes an interactive checklist with a detailed breakdown of each check, plus a downloadable PDF worksheet you can use with your team.
Tutorials
CloudnativePG: postgres database the modern way
medium.com
This tutorial shows how to run highly available PostgreSQL on Kubernetes with CloudNativePG and Terraform by replacing the traditional Patroni, etcd, and HAProxy stack with a simpler operator-driven setup.
dev.to
This tutorial shows how to add Prometheus, Grafana, Alertmanager, custom metrics, ServiceMonitors, dashboards, and alert rules to an EKS cluster through GitOps.
CRaC in Production: 88% Faster Spring Boot Startups on Kubernetes
medium.com
This tutorial shows how CRaC can cut Spring Boot startup time on Kubernetes from 23 seconds to 2.8 seconds and explains the real production issues around AWS SDK checkpointing and OpenTelemetry.
Most teams scale Kubernetes by thinking about pods and nodes. At Render, Brian Stack ran into a different dimension: hundreds of thousands of namespaces per cluster, multiplied across DaemonSets that list-watch every namespace.
Brian explains how Render traced the issue through Calico and Vector, worked with upstream maintainers, and turned memory profiling into operational wins: lower node costs, lighter API-server load, and faster rollouts.
In this interview:
- Why namespaces can become a hidden scaling bottleneck
- How DaemonSets multiply memory and control-plane pressure
- How profiling, staging clusters, and upstream collaboration freed 7 TiB
- Why pushing from an 80% fix to a complete fix can make teams faster
Kubernetes jobs
Software Architect with IntelliDyne Jobs for Veterans
Salary: $150K to $180K a year
Location: based in the office in Washington, DC, USA
Tech stack: Kubernetes, On-Prem, Kubernetes, Azure Government, AWS GovCloud, AWS, Azure, Docker, OpenShift, Audit Logging
System Administrator with Mattel Inc
Salary: $58.5K to $4.4L a year
Location: based in the office in Hyderabad, IN
Tech stack: Kubernetes, Kubernetes, AWS, Azure, OpenShift, alerting, monitoring, logging, Red Hat Insights, BigFix
Support Engineer with Mirantis
Salary: $45K to $176K a year
Location: remote from
Tech stack: Kubernetes, Kubernetes, Docker, Openstack, On-premise, Kibana, alert management, Grafana, Nagios, Prometheus
Support Engineer with Mirantis
Salary: $45K to $176K a year
Location: remote from
Tech stack: Kubernetes, Kubernetes, K0s, Mirantis Kubernetes Engine, Docker, Openstack, On-premise, Mirantis Opensack/k0s, MOSK, alert management
Platform Engineer with Mattel Inc
Salary: $1.25L to $3.74L a year
Location: based in the office in Hyderabad, IN
Tech stack: Kubernetes, Kubernetes, Google Cloud, AWS, Azure, OpenShift, Dynatrace, alerting, monitoring, logging
Discover more Kubernetes jobs on Kube Careers →
Code & tools
github.com/DavidHavoc
ayaFlow is an eBPF-based Rust tool that runs as a sidecarless DaemonSet to capture node-wide network traffic, expose metrics, and provide lightweight kernel-level visibility for troubleshooting and observability.
github.com/teleskopio
Teleskopio is a small, open-source Kubernetes web client that provides a clean browser interface for viewing and managing cluster resources without the weight of a full platform dashboard.
github.com/valkey-io
Valkey Operator is a Kubernetes operator that automates deployment and lifecycle management of Valkey clusters and instances with features like automated installation and configuration management.
github.com/corpobit
Crossview is a React-based dashboard for managing and monitoring Crossplane resources in Kubernetes with features like:
- resource visualization,
- search capabilities,
- SSO support,
- and deployment via Helm or Kubernetes manifests.
github.com/lucky-sideburn
With k-inv, you can stress a Kubernetes cluster in a fun way and check its resilience by playing space invaders.
Other interesting projects:
Upcoming Kubernetes events
May
18
In-person conference organized by CND Italy.
Location: Bologna, IT
This event requires an entrance fee
May
18
Advanced Kubernetes course (London)
In-person workshop organized by LearnKube.
Location: London, UK
This event requires an entrance fee
May
18
Advanced Kubernetes course (Boston)
In-person workshop organized by LearnKube.
Location: Boston, MA, USA
This event requires an entrance fee
May
13
Kubernetes Community Days Toronto Canada 2026
In-person conference organized by KCD Toronto.
Location: Toronto, CA
This event requires an entrance fee
Use KCDTO-2026-KUBEEVENTS to get 20% off
May
15
Kubernetes Community Days Texas 2026
In-person conference organized by KCD Texas.
Location: Austin, TX, USA
This event requires an entrance fee
Kubernetes call for papers
6
days
Kubernetes Community Days Lima 2026
The Call For Paper is open until 19 May 2026 at UTC. More info →
Location: Lima, PE
In-person conference organized by KCD Lima, Perú.
The conference starts on the 18 July 2026.
- Apply here
19
days
The Call For Paper is open until 1 June 2026 at UTC. More info →
Location: Bergen, NO
In-person conference organized by CND Norway.
The conference starts on the 27 October 2026.
- Apply here
19
days
KubeCon + CloudNativeCon North America 2026
The Call For Paper is open until 1 June 2026 at UTC. More info →
Location: Los Angeles, CA, USA
In-person conference organized by Linux Foundation.
The conference starts on the 26 October 2026.
- Apply here
40
days
The Call For Paper is open until 22 June 2026 at UTC. More info →
Location: Utrecht, NL
In-person conference organized by Dutch CND.
The conference starts on the 29 October 2026.
- Apply here
22
days
The Call For Paper is open until 4 June 2026 at UTC. More info →
Location: Feira de Santana, BR
In-person conference organized by Devopsdays.
The conference starts on the 6 June 2026.
- Apply here
22
days
The Call For Paper is open until 4 June 2026 at UTC. More info →
Location: Curitiba, BR
In-person conference organized by Devopsdays.
The conference starts on the 22 August 2026.
- Apply here
19
days
The Call For Paper is open until 1 June 2026 at UTC. More info →
Location: Belgrade, RS
In-person conference organized by heapspace.
The conference starts on the 6 November 2026.
- Apply here
4
days
The Call For Paper is open until 17 May 2026 at UTC. More info →
Location: San Jose, CA, USA
In-person conference organized by TechEx Events.
The conference starts on the 19 May 2026.
- Apply here
18
days
The Call For Paper is open until 31 May 2026 at UTC. More info →
Location: Istanbul, TR
In-person conference organized by DevOps Turkey.
The conference starts on the 29 September 2026.
- Apply here
Thanks for reading.
See you next week!
— Gulcan