Kubernetes that earns
its keep.
Cluster design, migration, cost, and Day-2 operations for teams running real traffic. We build Kubernetes platforms that are secure by default, cheap to run, and boring to operate — then hand them back to your team.
The Kubernetes work, end to end.
Whether you are standing up your first cluster or inheriting one that has grown teeth, we cover the full lifecycle: architecture, migration, cost, security, and the day-to-day operations that keep it healthy. Here is where teams put us to work.
Cluster Architecture & Migration
Right-sized clusters designed for your actual traffic, not a conference demo. We plan and run migrations off legacy VMs, ECS, or a cluster someone spun up two years ago and never revisited. You get a topology you can reason about and a migration path that de-risks the cutover.
- EKS, GKE, AKS, and self-managed cluster design
- Network, ingress, and service mesh topology
- Zero- and low-downtime workload migration
- Stateful workload and database migration planning
Cost Optimization
Kubernetes bills balloon quietly: over-provisioned requests, idle nodes, and forgotten GPUs. We make spend visible and cut it. See our take on GPU cost for LLM inference, and how we tie clusters back into cloud billing.
- Request/limit right-sizing and bin-packing
- Karpenter, cluster autoscaler, and Spot strategy
- Namespace-level cost visibility and showback
- GPU and inference workload cost control
Production Hardening & Security
The defaults are not production-ready. We close the gap between a cluster that merely runs and one that survives a security review and a 3am incident without a scramble. Controls are written as policy so they hold up as your team and your workloads grow.
- RBAC, network policies, and pod security standards
- Secrets management and image supply-chain hardening
- CIS benchmarks and admission control (OPA, Kyverno)
- Multi-tenancy and namespace isolation
Day-2 Operations & SRE
Standing a cluster up is the easy 20 percent. We handle the other 80: upgrades, backups, on-call, and the reliability engineering that keeps it healthy. This pairs closely with our SRE practice.
- Kubernetes version upgrades without drama
- Backup, disaster recovery, and restore testing
- SLOs, alerting, and on-call runbooks
- Capacity planning and autoscaler tuning
Managed vs Self-Hosted
Managed control plane or roll your own? The honest answer depends on your scale, compliance needs, and the team you can staff. We help you decide with numbers instead of vendor slides, and we are just as willing to talk you out of Kubernetes as into it.
- Managed (EKS, AKS, GKE) vs self-managed trade-offs
- Compliance, sovereignty, and air-gapped options
- Total cost of ownership modeling
- Exit and portability planning
Autoscaling & Observability
A cluster you cannot see is a cluster you cannot trust. We wire in metrics, logs, and traces, then make scaling automatic and predictable under real, spiky load.
- HPA, VPA, and Karpenter tuning
- Prometheus, Grafana, and OpenTelemetry pipelines
- Load and failure testing before launch
- Dashboards your on-call engineers actually use
When teams bring us in.
You do not need all of these to call us. Any one of them usually means Kubernetes is costing you more time, money, or sleep than it should.
- Your cloud bill jumped and Kubernetes is the line item nobody can explain.
- A migration to Kubernetes stalled, or a self-managed cluster has become one engineer's unpaid second job.
- Deploys are scary, upgrades keep getting postponed, and the cluster is three versions behind.
- You passed a security review by promising to fix the Kubernetes findings later, and later has arrived.
- Pods get OOM-killed or evicted under load and nobody is quite sure why.
- You are hiring for a platform team you do not have yet and need real momentum now.
From first call to steady state.
Every engagement follows the same honest shape. No surprise scope, no production changes you have not seen, and no lock-in to us as a vendor.
1. Review
We start with a review of your cluster across architecture, cost, security, and reliability. You get a prioritized findings document you can act on with us or without us. It is diagnosis first, not a pitch.
2. Plan
We agree on scope, sequencing, and a rollback story for every change. Nothing lands in production without a plan you have seen and signed off on, and we sequence the highest-risk work first while attention is fresh.
3. Build
We do the work alongside your team, in your repositories, through pull requests and pairing. You watch the cluster get measurably better in real time instead of receiving a black box you cannot maintain.
4. Transfer or operate
We hand over runbooks and documentation and then either step back or stay on for Day-2 operations. Either way, your engineers can run what we built, because they helped build it.
| how we start | a cluster review of architecture, cost, security, and reliability — with a prioritized findings doc inside the first two weeks |
| typical duration | hardening pass 3–5 weeks · full migration onto managed Kubernetes with GitOps 10–16 weeks |
| engagement models | strategic advisory · project delivery · managed devops & sre |
| what you get in writing | architecture diagrams, runbooks, a cost model, and pairing sessions with your engineers |
| tooling stance | vendor-agnostic; we work with your cloud and tools, and every change ships with a migration plan, never rip-and-replace |
Engineers who have run production.
We are not a reseller with a Kubernetes logo on the deck. Everyone who touches your cluster has carried a pager for one. That changes the advice you get: we optimize for the 3am incident and the quarter-end invoice, not for the biggest possible statement of work. When Kubernetes is not the answer, we say so.
We are deliberately vendor-agnostic. If managed EKS, AKS, or GKE is right for you, we will recommend it plainly; if it is not, we will not sell you a self-hosted platform you cannot staff. Most of the expensive mistakes we get called in to unwind were avoidable, and we wrote up the common ones in three Kubernetes migration mistakes.
Kubernetes is a means, not the goal. If you are still deciding whether the platform is even worth it, start with what DevOps actually is and talk to us before you commit a team to running a cluster. Sometimes the right recommendation is a smaller footprint, and we would rather tell you that now than bill you for it later.
Common questions.
How long does a Kubernetes consulting engagement take?
Most engagements run 4 to 16 weeks depending on scope. A cluster health check and hardening pass is typically 3 to 5 weeks. A full migration onto managed Kubernetes with GitOps runs 10 to 16 weeks. We scope it honestly and give you a timeline before any work starts.
Should we run managed Kubernetes like EKS, AKS, or GKE, or self-host?
For most teams a managed control plane like EKS, AKS, or GKE is the right default because it removes the riskiest operational toil. Self-hosting only pays off at large scale or under specific compliance and hardware constraints. We help you make that call with numbers, not dogma.
Can you migrate our existing workloads to Kubernetes without downtime?
Usually, yes. We migrate service by service behind a load balancer or service mesh, run old and new in parallel, and shift traffic over gradually with a tested rollback path. Stateful systems and databases need more care, so we plan those explicitly rather than lifting and shifting them blindly.
How do you reduce our Kubernetes costs?
We start by making spend visible per namespace and workload, then right-size requests and limits, tune autoscaling, adopt Spot or committed-use capacity where it is safe, and cut idle nodes. GPU and inference workloads get special attention because they dominate the bill when present. Most clients see 20 to 40 percent savings without trading away reliability.
Do you hand the cluster back to our team, or do you operate it?
Either. Many clients want us to build, harden, and then transfer ownership with runbooks and pairing sessions. Others keep us on for Day-2 operations and on-call as a managed engagement. We are glad to work ourselves out of a job or to stay on as your reliability partner, whichever fits.
Ready to make your cluster boring?
Book a free 30-minute cluster review. We'll look at your architecture, your bill, and your security posture, and tell you honestly what to fix first.
Get Your ReviewSee also: DevOps Engineering · Site Reliability Engineering · Cloud & FinOps
From the blog: 3 K8s Migration Mistakes · K8s 1.33 In-Place Pod Resize · GPU Cost for LLM Inference