Production checklist
Kubernetes production checklist: 5 checks before launch
5 checks for running Kubernetes in production: 3 should-dos and 2 good-to-haves. Each one says why it matters, how to verify it and where the docs are.
Updated . Every check links the vendor’s own docs.
Should do (3)
Set resource requests and limits on every container
One noisy pod otherwise starves the whole node.
Verify from the command line
Every container should show requests and limits. A LimitRange per namespace sets defaults for anything that forgets.
kubectl get pods -A -o jsonpath='{range .items[*]}{.metadata.namespace}/{.metadata.name}{"\t"}{.spec.containers[*].resources}{"\n"}{end}'Add readiness and liveness probes
Traffic only reaches pods that are ready, and hung pods get restarted.
Verify from the command line
Each Deployment should list both a Liveness and a Readiness probe.
kubectl describe deployment <name> -n <namespace> | grep -E "Liveness|Readiness"
Least-privilege RBAC for workloads and people
A compromised pod shouldn’t be able to read every Secret in the cluster.
Verify from the command line
A workload’s service account should not be able to read every Secret or use * verbs.
kubectl auth can-i --list --as=system:serviceaccount:<namespace>:<service-account>
Good to have (2)
Encrypt Secrets at rest
Secrets are only base64-encoded in etcd by default.
Check the config
Self-managed: the API server runs with --encryption-provider-config pointing at a KMS or aescbc provider. Managed clusters: check the provider’s secrets encryption setting.
Restrict pod-to-pod traffic with NetworkPolicies
By default every pod can reach every other pod.
Verify from the command line
Each app namespace should have a default-deny policy plus explicit allows, and your network plugin must enforce NetworkPolicy (Calico, Cilium and others do).
kubectl get networkpolicy -A
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