Why Most Kubernetes Platforms Fail at Scale (And How to Build One That Doesn't)
“Running Kubernetes isn't the hard part. Running multiple clusters, for multiple teams, with multiple SLAs — is.”
Most platform teams still think the hard part is managing etcd (the Kubernetes key/value store maintaining the state of Kubernetes itself), tuning ingress controllers (allowing external traffic to deployed applications), or tweaking node pool. But that’s not what kills internal platforms.
The true failure modes of Kubernetes at scale are organizational, not technical:
No clear multi-tenancy strategy — every team is treated as special.
No governance model — platform teams become manual gatekeepers.
No enablement layer — developer experience degrades with each new team.
Throughout my career, I've engaged with several organizations aiming to build "the" Kubernetes platform, the holy grail of engineering powered by the engineers' NIH bias: consequence, organisations started pouring a sizeable amount of money into bespoke Kubernetes setups that implode under their own complexity — not because they couldn’t scale pods, but because they couldn't scale trust and ownership.
If you’re serious about scaling Kubernetes, you need to stop thinking like an ops team and start thinking like a product company backed by a framework.
The framework: 3 Layers of Platform Scale
Tenancy – How do you isolate, onboard, and delegate with security as first-class citizen?
Governance – What’s observable, auditable, and automatable?
Enablement – Can product teams self-serve without breaking things?
❌ Ignore these, and your platform will collapse under what I call the JIRA Tickets support nightmare and the unbearable shadow infra.
✅ Design for these, and you’ll unlock real leverage — faster team delivery, lower infra friction, and strategic visibility at the C-level.
This is my new LinkedIn newsletter where I discuss Kubernetes, multi-cluster management, and Platform Engineering — I won't focus on why IdP is the new hype and yada-yada. Direct insights from the forefront of advanced engineering research, built for production-grade for enterprise-level resiliency.
Next week: Why Cluster API Is Quietly Eating Platform Engineering (and Why You Should Care).
Octopus Deploy | CI/CD | DevOps | GitOps | Argo
2moCongratulations on the inaugural post! ⎈ Dario
Author of Policy as Code - Improving Cloud Native Security
2moEnablement is where a lot of failures occur. Whether building or buying, the product you are pushing will fail if you don't have a well-thought-out enablement plan and a team focused on that plan. Your tenants should not have to be SMEs of the tech you are using for your product.
Evangelist @ NetApp | Translating enterprise technology into human | Co-host of The STEMINISTS podcast
2moYes, the technology is only as important as the outcomes it serves - and I think the success of Kubernetes has also been its biggest failing in some ways, because engineers were so successful in building it at first, it was never treated as a product. Now some shops might have to go backwards before they go forwards :) Looking forward to checking out your newsletter!
Looking forward to the full artcle ⎈ Dario Tranchitella
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