Why Kubernetes is challenging in production

Kubernetes could be easy to install, but it is complex to operate and maintain. Kubernetes in production brings challenges and difficulties along the way, from scaling, uptime, and security, to resilience, observability, resources utilization, and cost management. Kubernetes has succeeded in solving container management and orchestration, and it created a standard layer above the compute services. However, Kubernetes still lacks proper or complete support for some essential services, such as Identity and Access Management (IAM), storage, and image registries.

Usually, a Kubernetes cluster belongs to a bigger company's production infrastructure, which includes databases, IAM, Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP), messaging, streaming, and others. Bringing a Kubernetes cluster to production requires connecting it to these external infrastructure parts.

Even during cloud transformation projects, we expect Kubernetes to manage...