DevOps/SRE: Kubernetes Evaluation (90-Min Workshop)

Kubernetes offers unparalleled speed, flexibility, and efficiency, yet numerous organizations may not possess the required expertise to establish and maintain a cost-effective, secure, and dependable platform. Consequently, they struggle to realize the immense capabilities of Kubernetes.

The Kubernetes quick engagement offers an efficient approach to validating the architecture of your container deployments in the cloud, pinpointing gaps that elevate overall cost, hinder performance or increase security risk, and devising a strategic plan to harness the potential of Kubernetes. Only three steps needed:

Engagement (90 minutes)

• Architecture Review. This includes deep dive into your existing network and security architecture and evaluation of the current configuration, looking at areas such as use of virtual networks, load balancers, storage, and security strategies. We'll also consider how your architecture integrates with other Azure services.

• Workloads Review. This includes examination of the applications currently running on AKS clusters, and assessing the suitability of workloads for the Kubernetes environment, identifying potential bottlenecks or limitations. We will also scrutinize use of Kubernetes features for managing workloads, like namespaces, jobs, and deployments. This also includes understanding current CI/CD practices. We'll take a close look at your pipeline, how you manage updates, rollbacks, testing, and how these processes align with industry best practices.

• Security & Observability Review. We'll closely evaluate both practices as they relate to your AKS deployment in this phase, including RBAC (Role-Based Access Control) settings, network policies, secrets management, and examining use of Azure's native security features. We'll also look at your compliance with security best practices and make recommendations where improvements could be made. On the observability front, we will review your monitoring and observability practices. This entails a comprehensive look at how you monitor the health of your clusters and workloads, how you handle logging, metrics collection, and tracing, as well as how effectively you are utilizing tools like Azure Monitor and Azure Log Analytics, or other third-party tooling.

Deliverables

The Encora team will provide a detailed and insightful technical report that will encapsulate our analysis of your current setup and a series of specific recommendations that are tailored to your unique environment. These are the key elements of the report:

• Architecture Review: This section will contain an analysis of your current network and security architecture, focusing on areas such as network configuration, security measures, and resource management. To provide a roadmap for the future, we will detail a recommended future state of your architecture, a vision informed by your specific needs, industry trends, and best practices.

• CI/CD State Analysis: We will encapsulate our findings on existing CI/CD practices within your Kubernetes clusters. This includes a detailed breakdown of current pipeline, deployment strategies, testing, and rollback procedures. We'll propose a CI/CD solution that leverages modern approaches and tools, enhancing the speed and reliability of your software delivery process, reducing the risk of downtime during updates.

• Security and Observability Assessment: This portion of the report will highlight any identified security threats and observability issues in your existing setup. Our findings will be based on an evaluation of your RBAC settings, network policies, monitoring tools, and more. We'll propose comprehensive solutions to address each identified issue to enhance your security posture and improve your ability to observe and respond to system behavior or incidents.

• Cost Optimization Opportunities: We will detail potential areas for cost optimization based on our analysis of your resource usage and cost management strategies. This will encompass strategies for better resource allocation, leveraging cost-effective Azure features, and suggestions for potential architectural changes that could lead to significant cost savings.

Business Value

• Boost customer satisfaction with increased operational agility and real-time scalability.
• Propel market readiness by improving application deployment speed and cross-platform flexibility.
• Minimize risk with strengthened security measures for your AKS deployments.
• Reduce cloud costs by maximizing the efficiency of resource utilization.
• Foster innovation with faster, more reliable Continuous Integration/Continuous Deployment (CI/CD) practices.
• Enhance business decision-making with improved system observability and insights.
• Increase system reliability and reduce downtime through effective redundancy and failover strategies.