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SmartyDevs
Cloud · 03

Kubernetes, where it fits.

Production Kubernetes with the operational discipline most teams underestimate — or, where it's the wrong answer, the simpler thing that works. Plus the internal developer platforms that make engineers faster.

§ 01The problem

The problem we solve

Kubernetes is the default answer to a question many companies shouldn't be asking. Done well it's a foundation that scales for years. Done badly it's a tax on every engineer for the rest of the company's life. We've operated production clusters at scale and we've also told plenty of teams to stick with Fly, Railway or ECS — whichever truth fits your case.

§ 02Capabilities

What we ship

  • 01Production Kubernetes on EKS, GKE, AKS or self-managed
  • 02Cluster design: node pools, autoscaling, networking, ingress
  • 03GitOps with Argo CD or Flux
  • 04Workload migration onto Kubernetes done safely
  • 05Internal developer platforms with Backstage, port, opinionated tooling
  • 06Service mesh where it actually solves a problem
  • 07Multi-cluster, multi-region deployments
  • 08Cost-aware cluster sizing and bin-packing
  • 09Operators for stateful workloads
  • 10Honest assessment of when Kubernetes is the wrong tool
§ 03Deliverables

What you receive

  • Production cluster with documented operational model
  • GitOps repository as the source of truth
  • Runbooks for the failure modes specific to your cluster
  • Onboarding documentation for engineers new to Kubernetes
§ 04Stack

Stack we reach for

EKS · GKE · AKS
Karpenter · Cluster Autoscaler
Argo CD · Flux
Helm · Kustomize
Istio · Linkerd · Cilium
External Secrets · Vault
Backstage · port
Prometheus · Loki · Tempo
§ 05Ideal for

Ideal for

  • Companies whose Kubernetes setup grew faster than understanding
  • Teams adopting Kubernetes and wanting to start from a solid baseline
  • Engineering organizations building an internal developer platform
  • Companies needing an honest assessment of whether Kubernetes is right
§ 06Process

How an engagement runs

  1. 01

    Cluster audit

    Networking, security, cost, operational maturity. Written report.

  2. 02

    Target state

    Cluster design, GitOps model, secrets and observability — designed for your team's operational maturity.

  3. 03

    Migration / build

    Phased migration of workloads onto the new platform, or greenfield build.

  4. 04

    Operate

    On-call rotation, observability tuning, documentation handoff to your team.

§ 07Engagement

How to engage

01

Kubernetes Audit

1 — 2 weeks

Cluster review with prioritized findings and cost projection.

02

Platform Build

8 — 16 weeks

Production platform built or rebuilt with documentation and operational maturity.

03

Platform Operate

Ongoing

Retained platform engineering for clusters that need senior care.

§ 08Common questions

Frequently asked.

01Do we actually need Kubernetes?

Most companies under 50 engineers don't. Fly, Railway, Render or ECS will cover you for years with less operational tax. We'll tell you when Kubernetes is genuinely warranted.

02Service mesh?

Only when you have a specific problem it solves. For most teams, the operational cost outweighs the benefit. We'll discuss honestly.

Have a problem worth solving well?

Tell us the outcome you want. We'll tell you what it takes — honestly, within a week, in writing.

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