The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly of Managing Production Systems with Kubernetes in Chinese Enterprises

Kubernetes has rapidly evolved from theoretical trials to empirical deployments in an increasing number of US enterprises. However, the Chinese enterprises unveil different traits when it comes to req …

Kubernetes has rapidly evolved from theoretical trials to empirical deployments in an increasing number of US enterprises. However, the Chinese enterprises unveil different traits when it comes to requirements, platforms, and the tech-savviness of the operators, rendering the upstream guidelines and references a far cry from enabling successful Kubernetes production usage in varying circumstances. In this talk, we leverage our unique experience with using Kubernetes to manage production systems in large-scale Chinese enterprises, with a stab at stereotyping different categories of common usage scenarios not covered by the official guidelines. Peering through the mist, we aim to glean insights into the usage patterns in different industries (carrier, finance, e-commerce, and traditional, etc) to use Kubernetes more effectively. We start with the standard Kubernetes features people are most thrilled about, then unearth the glitches and pitfalls when running Kubernetes in the wild, including dealing with Internet inaccessibility, unique security requirements, dancing with traditional, stateful applications, etc. Finally, we share our open source efforts and tools to tackle those issues in pursuit of wilder kubernetes adoption.