As developers, one of the most important things we can consider when designing and building applications is the ability to know if our application is running in an ideal operating condition, or said another way: the ability to know whether or not your application is healthy. This is particularly important when deploying your application to Kubernetes. Kubernetes has the concept of container probes that, when used, can help ensure the health and availability of your application.

This article explores a few popular CLI tools for managing k8s environments. CLI tools offer efficient, streamlined management and troubleshooting for Kubernetes. In this article, we'll learn how they can help you manage k8s environments.

Kubernetes is known for its modularity, and its integration with cloud environments. Throughout its history, Kubernetes provided in-tree cloud provider integrations with most providers, allowing us to create cloud-related resources via API calls without requiring us to jump through hoops to deploy a cluster that utilizes the power of underlying networking infrastructure. However, this behavior will change with the release of Kubernetes v1.31, and right now is the best time to plan for it.

In simple terms, containers are a standard package of software that enable applications to run consistently across different computing environments. Often, these applications are broken down into smaller collections of independent services known as microservices. For many organizations, these microservices-based applications have replaced traditional monolithic applications because they offer increased performance, flexibility, and scale.

Explore practical methods for monitoring ephemeral storage metrics in Kubernetes to ensure efficient resource management and improve overall performance.

Docker containers generate logs to monitor their operations, but without a mechanism in place to manage these logs, they can grow indefinitely, leading to excessive disk space consumption and performance degradation. Implementing docker log rotation is crucial to control log file size and quantity, ensuring efficient log management and optimal system performance.

Single Pane of Glass (SPOG) monitoring is a term used to denote monitoring applications with a single tool that provides a comprehensive set of dashboards for the entire software system of an organization. Managing multiple monitoring tools for different aspects of the IT system becomes too cumbersome. And that’s how the concept of a single pane of glass monitoring evolved. Most modern applications are now built using distributed software systems.

Prometheus is a go-to solution for monitoring containerized environments. This detailed guide will walk you through setting up Prometheus for Docker, helping you achieve robust monitoring for your containerized applications.

DX App Synthetic Monitor (DX ASM) performs synthetic checks from an external perspective to replicate real-user experience. Using the DX ASM global network of more than 90 monitoring stations, customers can test a website or application on a 24/7 basis, with no disruption to production systems. The solution also provides the option to create on-premises monitoring stations (OPMS) within a data center to monitor web applications and APIs inside the firewall.

Kubernetes operators and Helm charts are both tools used for deploying and managing applications within Kubernetes clusters, but they have different strengths, and it can be difficult to determine which one to use for your application. Helm simplifies the deployment and management of Kubernetes resources using templates and version-controlled packages. It excels in scenarios where repeatable deployments and easy upgrades or rollbacks are needed.