Cluster review
Assess workload design, networking, ingress, observability and scaling risks.
Kubernetes consulting
Kubernetes consulting and EKS migration support for teams ready to scale delivery without chaos.
I help product teams improve Kubernetes releases, security, observability and operational ownership.
EKS migration
Plan cutovers, workload portability and production rollback steps.
Ongoing support
Improve release confidence, monitoring and platform operations over time.
Production Kubernetes work starts with workload and recovery evidence
A cluster can be healthy while applications remain difficult to release or recover. Production readiness depends on workload requests and limits, probes, disruption behaviour, ingress, identity, secrets, storage, dependency failure and the signals available during a rollout. A review therefore follows representative workloads as well as examining the cluster control plane.
Migration work adds another layer of risk. Rancher, OpenShift and self-managed Kubernetes environments often contain platform-specific ingress, storage classes, policies, image flows or operational scripts. Those dependencies need to be identified before a target EKS design is treated as complete. The safest plan proves networking, identity, observability and rollback with a representative application.
The engagement is scoped around the operating outcome: a migration decision, production-readiness review, upgrade plan, release improvement or support handover. It is not a generic list of Kubernetes objects. Findings link configuration to the failure or delivery scenario it affects.
Outcomes the engagement is designed to produce
A production-readiness baseline
Document workload, security, networking, observability, capacity and recovery gaps with evidence and owners rather than a context-free compliance score.
A migration design that covers dependencies
Map namespaces, ingress, DNS, certificates, identity, secrets, storage, policies, images and external services before deciding cutover waves.
Safer application releases
Improve probes, resource settings, rollout strategy, telemetry and rollback so a deployment can be evaluated from user-visible behaviour.
An operable platform
Define upgrade responsibility, incident paths, runbooks, access boundaries and capacity signals that the owning team can maintain.
How the work runs
Phase 1
Discover
Choose representative workloads and gather manifests, Helm values, cluster configuration, recent failures and operational constraints.
Phase 2
Design
Map gaps or target dependencies, record decisions and define acceptance tests for networking, identity, data and recovery.
Phase 3
Pilot
Prove one workload in a non-production or controlled environment and test deployment, observability and rollback.
Phase 4
Transition
Sequence remaining work, document ownership and hand over runbooks, evidence and the unresolved risk backlog.
Concrete deliverables
The exact list is agreed before access begins. A typical engagement produces:
- Workload and cluster production-readiness findings with priority and evidence.
- Dependency map covering ingress, DNS, identity, secrets, storage and external services.
- Target EKS or Kubernetes platform decisions with stated trade-offs.
- Pilot migration or remediation implementation for a representative workload.
- Cutover, validation and rollback runbook with owner checkpoints.
- Upgrade, observability, incident and capacity improvement backlog.
Good fit
- A Kubernetes platform is running but releases or incidents still depend on specialists.
- Rancher, OpenShift or self-managed workloads are being considered for EKS.
- A launch, audit or cluster upgrade needs a practical readiness decision.
- The team wants implementation support as well as findings.
Not the right fit
- The only requirement is a generic cluster installation with no identified workloads or owners.
- A migration date is fixed but discovery, testing and rollback are explicitly excluded.
- The business requires a 24/7 managed Kubernetes service with an on-call rota.
- Production credentials must be shared through email or the public enquiry form.
Frequently asked questions
Do you work only with AWS EKS?
No. The experience base includes EKS, Rancher and OpenShift as well as Docker and Helm delivery. EKS is a common target, but workload portability and operating requirements drive the recommendation.
Can you review a cluster without production write access?
Yes. Discovery normally begins with read-only configuration, deployment evidence, telemetry and interviews. Write access is requested only for agreed implementation steps and should follow the client access process.
What is checked before a Kubernetes cutover?
At minimum: image availability, configuration, identity, secrets, networking, DNS, certificates, storage, autoscaling, probes, observability, external dependencies, deployment validation and a workable rollback path.
Can the engagement cover application pipelines too?
Yes. Kubernetes reliability and CI/CD are closely connected. A migration plan can include image build, scanning, artefact promotion, Helm or manifest handling, deployment approvals and post-deployment verification.