Kubernetes looks simple in a tutorial. You apply a YAML file, your pod comes up, and it feels like magic. Then you put it in front of real traffic and things get interesting fast.

Always Set Resource Limits

If you do not set CPU and memory limits on your pods, a single misbehaving workload can starve everything else on the node. Set requests to reflect what your app normally uses and set limits slightly above peak usage.

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Resource limits are not optional. They are the contract between your workload and the cluster.

Secret Management

Kubernetes Secrets are base64 encoded, not encrypted. Use an external secrets manager like AWS Secrets Manager or HashiCorp Vault and sync secrets into the cluster using the External Secrets Operator rather than storing them in git.