Chapter 2: Architecting Production-Grade Kubernetes Infrastructure

In the previous chapter, you learned about the core components of Kubernetes and the basics of its infrastructure, and why putting Kubernetes in production is a challenging journey. We introduced the production-readiness characteristics for the Kubernetes clusters, along with our recommended checklist for the services and configurations that ensure the production-readiness of your clusters.

We also introduced a group of infrastructure design principles that we learned through building production-grade cloud environments. We use them as our guideline through this book whenever we make architectural and design decisions, and we highly recommend that cloud infrastructure teams consider these when it comes to architecting new infrastructure for Kubernetes and cloud platforms in general.

In this chapter, you will learn about the important architectural decisions that you will need to tackle while designing your Kubernetes infrastructure. We will explore the alternatives and the choices that you have for each of these decisions, along with the possible benefits and drawbacks. In addition to that, you will learn about the cloud architecture considerations, such as scaling, availability, security, and cost. We do not intend to make final decisions but provide the guidance because every organization has different needs and use cases. Our role is to explore them, and guide you through the decision-making process. When possible, we will state our preferred choices, which we will follow through this book for the practical exercises.

In this chapter, we will cover the following topics:

• Understanding Kubernetes infrastructure design considerations
• Exploring Kubernetes deployment strategy alternatives
• Designing an Amazon EKS infrastructure