Containers & K8s System Designs

Worked Containers & K8s system design walkthroughs: the requirements, the trade-offs, real numbers and the component choices behind each design.

Browse all system designs

  1. Autoscaling in Kubernetes: HPA, VPA, Cluster Autoscaler, KEDA, and Scale-to-Zero

    A deep-dive into every Kubernetes autoscaling layer—from pod CPU metrics to event-driven scale-to-zero—with real configurations, failure modes, and trade-offs.

    Containers & K8s · intermediate · 12 min read

  2. Container Images, Layers, OCI and Container Runtimes

    A deep dive into how container images are built, stored, and executed — covering OCI specs, layer mechanics, content-addressable storage, and the runtime stack from containerd to runc.

    Containers & K8s · beginner · 12 min read

  3. Kubernetes Control Plane: API Server, etcd, Scheduler, and Controllers

    A deep dive into how the Kubernetes control plane components coordinate to schedule workloads, maintain desired state, and survive failures at scale.

    Containers & K8s · intermediate · 12 min read

  4. Kubernetes Networking: CNI, Services, Ingress, DNS and Network Policy

    A deep-dive into how Kubernetes moves packets from pod to pod, cluster to internet, and back — covering CNI plugins, Service types, Ingress, CoreDNS, and NetworkPolicy enforcement.

    Containers & K8s · advanced · 12 min read

  5. Kubernetes Scheduling: Requests, Limits, QoS, Affinity, Taints, and Eviction

    A deep dive into how the Kubernetes scheduler places pods, enforces resource boundaries, and evicts workloads under pressure — with real numbers and production trade-offs.

    Containers & K8s · intermediate · 12 min read

  6. Multi-Tenant Kubernetes: Namespaces, Quotas, Policy and Hard Isolation

    A deep-dive into running multiple tenants safely on shared Kubernetes clusters: namespace topology, resource quotas, network and admission policies, and when to break out to separate clusters.

    Containers & K8s · advanced · 12 min read

  7. Running Databases and Stateful Workloads on Kubernetes

    A deep-dive into patterns, operators, storage primitives, and failure modes for running production databases and stateful services on Kubernetes.

    Containers & K8s · advanced · 12 min read

  8. Service Mesh: Sidecars, mTLS, Traffic Shifting and Mesh Observability

    A deep-dive into service mesh architecture covering sidecar proxies, mutual TLS, traffic management, and distributed observability for microservice platforms.

    Containers & K8s · advanced · 12 min read