Learn Kubernetes Weekly issue 202 · 23 Sept 2026
Etcd Replaced with Spanner, Deploying Made Boring, Zookeeper on GKE, Mixed Version Proxy Graduates to Beta, Multi-Region EKS
This newsletter is brought to you by Buoyant — The Buoyant Enterprise for Linkerd service mesh runs in production at Xbox (22,000 pods), Imagine Learning (40% cross-zone cost cut), and IntelliGRC (4× MRR after FedRAMP)
Kubernetes hard mode: how do banks run their platforms?
I've always found that financial firms have a tougher time with Kubernetes.
After a lot of research (and the usual week dedicated to illustrating my work), I can finally announce my next book: Kubernetes Architecture in Financial Services.
It covers seven areas, including tenant isolation, networking, policies, and more.
— Dan
Articles
We replaced etcd with Google Cloud Spanner. Here's what happened.
dev.to
This case study shows what happened when a team swapped etcd for Google Cloud Spanner, using commit timestamps instead of a single revision counter, so writes no longer queue behind each other.
How We Made Deploying a New Service Boring (and That’s a Compliment)
medium.com
This case study shows how Zencity replaced the copy-pasted Helm chart in every service repo with a shared monochart, so that adding a new service stopped being a project in its own right.
Distributed Consensus at Scale: Running Zookeeper on GKE with Local SSD (Z4D)
hackernoon.com
This article explains how running ZooKeeper on Google Cloud Z4D nodes with local SSDs removes the disk latency that slows consensus writes, plus the GKE anti-affinity, volume binding and JVM tuning it needs.
Kubernetes v1.36: Mixed Version Proxy Graduates to Beta
kubernetes.io
This article explains how the Mixed Version Proxy reached beta in Kubernetes 1.36, so during an upgrade an older API server forwards requests it does not know to a newer peer instead of answering 404.
Building a Multi-Region EKS Platform with Crossplane, FluxCD, and GitOps
medium.com
This article walks through a multi-region EKS platform where Crossplane provisions the AWS side, FluxCD reconciles every cluster and Git stays the single source of truth.
Beyond native Kubernetes scheduling: why Volcano is the missing piece in your AI infrastructure
sagar-parmar.medium.com
This article explains why the default Kubernetes scheduler struggles with AI training jobs, and how Volcano adds gang scheduling, queues and GPU topology awareness on top of it.
Articles worth checking out:
Kubernetes Architecture in Financial Services
How does a bank run Kubernetes under strict regulation?
Explore patterns for isolation, networking, policy, and auditing.
Tutorials
Going 0 to 1 in Distributed LLM Inference on Kubernetes
harinianand.substack.com
This tutorial walks through the llm-d quickstart on Kubernetes, pausing after each step to explain what you just deployed.
Running a High-Performance AI Gateway on Kubernetes
dev.to
This tutorial shows how to run Bifrost, an open-source AI gateway, on Kubernetes with Helm, cluster mode and autoscaling so thousands of LLM requests stay fast under load.
Zero-Cost Non-Prod EKS: Scale to Zero Nodes with KEDA Cron + Karpenter
medium.com
This tutorial shows how to chain KEDA cron scaling with Karpenter so non-prod EKS clusters drop to zero nodes at night and on weekends, cutting the compute bill by 65 to 85%.
Containerized self-hosted ADO agents using AKS and KEDA
haresh-v.hashnode.dev
This tutorial shows how to run Azure DevOps agents on AKS so that KEDA spins up a fresh agent pod whenever the pipeline queue grows and removes it when the job is done.
Kubernetes jobs
Software Engineer with Rhombus
Salary: $100K to $140K a year
Location: based in the office in Palo Alto, CA, USA
Tech stack: Kubernetes, Kubernetes, AWS, Docker, CI/CD, Git, compliance, AWS IAM, RBAC, security
DevSecOps Engineer with Robinhood
Salary: $146K to $220K a year
Location: based in the office in Bellevue, WA, USA
Tech stack: Kubernetes, cloud environments, Kubernetes, Cloud, alerting, monitoring, logging, tracing, SOAR, AI
Platform Engineer with Roku
Salary: $0 to $4.84L a year
Location: based in the office (and remote from home) in Bengaluru, IN
Tech stack: Kubernetes, Kubernetes, EKS, AKS, AWS, GKE, Docker, Loki, monitoring, logging
Head of Infrastructure with Roblox
Salary: $160.38K to $388.3K a year
Location: based in the office in San Mateo, CA, USA
Tech stack: Kubernetes, NVIDIA, GPU, Kubernetes, Cloud, On-premise, AI
Software Engineer with Robinhood
Salary: $153K to $230K a year
Location: based in the office (and remote from home) in Menlo Park, CA, USA
Tech stack: Kubernetes, Kubernetes, AWS, encryption, authentication, Authorization, identity, security, Data Protection, platform safety
Discover more Kubernetes jobs on Kube Careers →
Code & tools
Kor: Kubernetes Orphaned Resources Finder
github.com/yonahd
Kor is a CLI tool that scans your cluster and lists the unused resources nobody cleaned up, from forgotten ConfigMaps and Secrets to stale Services and PVCs.
Kogaro – Kubernetes Configuration Hygiene Agent
github.com/topiaruss
Kogaro continuously validates Kubernetes config with 60+ checks across reference, resource, security, image, and network domains, catching silent failures before they impact production.
mcp-server-kubernetes: Kubernetes Management via MCP
github.com/Flux159
mcp-server-kubernetes exposes a complete Kubernetes management layer via Model Context Protocol (MCP), letting tools like Claude Desktop and mcp-chat run kubectl and Helm commands securely.
Rune: Native macOS Kubernetes cluster manager
github.com/compilererrors
Rune is a fast native macOS app for people who debug clusters every day, with unified pod logs, YAML editing with server dry-run, port-forwarding and a command palette.
github.com/Telemaco019
Kubesafe is a tool that prevents accidental execution of dangerous commands on the wrong Kubernetes cluster by providing a safety net for cluster management.
Other interesting projects:
Upcoming Kubernetes events
Sept
23
Online webinar organized by CNCF Online Programs.
This is a virtual event
This is a free event.
Sept
24
The Technical Guide to Kubernetes Rightsizing in the Age of AI
Online webinar organized by LearnKube + Akamai.
This is a virtual event
This is a free event.
Sept
26
Kubernetes Community Days São Paulo 2026
In-person conference organized by KCD Brasil.
Location: São Paulo, BR
This event requires an entrance fee
Sept
28
Advanced Kubernetes course (San Francisco)
In-person workshop organized by LearnKube.
Location: San Francisco, CA, USA
This event requires an entrance fee
Sept
29
Kubernetes Community Days Sofia 2026
In-person conference organized by KCD Sofia.
Location: Sofia, BG
This event requires an entrance fee
Oct
22
Online workshop organized by LearnKube.
This is a virtual event
This event requires an entrance fee
Kubernetes call for papers
19
days
KubeCon + CloudNativeCon Europe 2027
The Call For Paper is open until 12 October 2026 at UTC. More info →
Location: Barcelona, ES
In-person conference organized by CNCF.
The conference starts on the 18 March 2027.
- Apply here
26
days
The Call For Paper is open until 19 October 2026 at UTC. More info →
Location: Los Angeles, CA, USA
In-person conference organized by SCaLE.
The conference starts on the 1 April 2027.
- Apply here
7
days
The Call For Paper is open until 30 September 2026 at UTC. More info →
Location: Bengaluru, IN
In-person conference organized by Canonical.
The conference starts on the 15 November 2026.
- Apply here
61
days
The Call For Paper is open until 23 November 2026 at UTC. More info →
Location: Vilnius, LT
In-person conference organized by DATA MINER.
The conference starts on the 27 November 2026.
- Apply here
26
days
Cloud Native AI + Inference Day Europe
The Call For Paper is open until 19 October 2026 at UTC. More info →
Location: Barcelona, ES
In-person conference organized by CNCF.
The conference starts on the 15 March 2027.
- Apply here
39
days
The Call For Paper is open until 1 November 2026 at UTC. More info →
Location: Los Angeles, CA, USA
In-person conference organized by DevopsDays.
The conference starts on the 2 April 2027.
- Apply here
22
days
Global Summit on Data Science and Cloud Computing
The Call For Paper is open until 15 October 2026 at UTC. More info →
Location: Rome, IT
In-person conference organized by Noveltics Group.
The conference starts on the 20 October 2026.
- Apply here
8
days
The Call For Paper is open until 1 October 2026 at UTC. More info →
Location: Amsterdam, NL
In-person conference organized by SREDay.
The conference starts on the 2 November 2026.
- Apply here
16
days
NextGen Intelligence Conference: Data, Cloud & AI
The Call For Paper is open until 9 October 2026 at UTC. More info →
Location: London, GB
In-person conference organized by TechAI.
The conference starts on the 17 November 2026.
- Apply here
Until next time!
— Gulcan