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Todd’s Builder Blog

Kubernetes

Kubernetes (often abbreviated K8s) is an open-source container orchestration platform originally designed by Google and now maintained by the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF). It automates deploying, scaling, and operating application containers across clusters of machines. You describe the desired state (e.g. “run 3 replicas of this app”), and Kubernetes reconciles the actual state to match it—handling scheduling, self-healing, load balancing, and rolling updates. It has become the de facto standard for running cloud-native workloads; the official documentation and Kubernetes API reference are the authoritative sources for concepts and usage.

Beating the “Gate Rush”
Why Slow Start Matters for Resiliency and Operational Excellence

·967 words·5 mins
Kubernetes Operational Excellence Kubernetes Service-Mesh Load-Balancer Progressive-Delivery
When a new pod comes online, it often experiences a gate rush: it’s declared “Ready,” immediately receives its full share of production traffic, and then falls over—spiking latency, throwing transient 5xx/504s, or flapping readiness. This is especially common for warm-up–sensitive services (JVM class loading/JIT, cache population, connection pool establishment, TLS handshakes, model loading, etc.).