Kubernetes without the theatre

We do not start with a service mesh. We start with three environments, health probes, and a rollback a human can trigger at 2am. YAML is not a strategy. Sleep is.

The smallest honest cluster still gives us rolling deploys, secrets that are not in git, and a dashboard that answers 'is checkout up'. Everything else waits.

YAML is not strategy

Manifests encode decisions already made: replica count, resource requests, disruption budgets. If the team cannot explain those numbers on a whiteboard, the cluster is a costume.

We keep a golden path: one ingress, one cert flow, one way to read logs. Optional add-ons are documented as optional, not installed 'just in case'.

Rollback is a product feature

If rollback needs the person who wrote the helm chart, you do not have rollback. You have folklore. We practise the revert on a weekday, not during an incident.

Kubernetes earns its keep when it is boring. Theatre belongs on a conference stage, not in your on-call rotation.