Kubernetes, Kommander

Kubernetes Governance: Balancing the Needs of Everyone on Your Team

Aug 24, 2020

Alex Hisaka

D2iQ

The problem with a majority of governance models is that they aren’t continuous. As development teams adopt cloud native technologies and evolve to more agile methods, such as continuous flow and continuous iteration, they are up against decades of policy that assume an older model and don’t fit into a month-long sprint. While governance models need to be restructured, if they’re too restrictive, it can discourage developers and prevent innovation. What organizations need is to be able to foster this kind of agile and speedy acceleration that leads to a devops orientation with good, solid governance practices folded into the mix. 

 

In this section, we provide a framework and blueprint to continually balance the needs of everyone on your team.

 

Multi-cluster Visibility and Management

 

As the number of clusters grows, operators are forced to spend increasing amounts of time managing clusters and less time doing actual work. They need to be able to centrally view, manage, and consolidate disparate clusters as they are discovered so that they can better optimize resources in a cost-effective manner and troubleshoot issues without losing valuable time.

 

Configuration Management

 

In order to reduce the potential vulnerable surface area of software in use, operators need to maintain granular control over how and where clusters are provisioned, as well as which versions of software can be used within project efforts. This level of control can help organizations meet risk and compliance demands and simplify the provisioning of services.

 

Authentication and Access Management 

 

Organizations can have differing governance and access control requirements depending on the type of business they are in. The access requirements for different roles may also evolve as employees change job roles and leave the organization. Operators need a simplified way to manage the individual logins and permissions and service the needs of a wide range of clusters with centralized policy-driven capabilities.

 

Building and Maintaining Line of Business Relationships

 

Finally, a key goal is to avoid conflict between IT’s efforts to monitor and to support the needs of the business and its strategy in innovation and revenue acceleration. Operations should not restrict technology, instead it should look to simplify its management for development teams. Although developers like the self-service model of Kubernetes, it’s become clear that enterprises want some control and opinions regarding which infrastructure, provider, and application services are best for the organization.

 

Learn more about how you can evolve your governance model and effectively implement it across your organization by downloading the ebook, “Kubernetes Governance: Take Control of Your Multi-Cluster Operations.”

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