Cookbook

The Kubernetes Cookbook is your collection of practical recipes and proven patterns for solving real-world Kubernetes challenges. Each recipe provides a complete, working solution with explanations, code examples, and best practices. Think of it as a recipe book for your Kubernetes kitchen—when you need to accomplish a specific task, you’ll find the ingredients and steps here.

What Are Recipes?

Recipes are step-by-step guides that solve specific problems or implement common patterns. Unlike tutorials that teach concepts, recipes focus on getting things done quickly and correctly. Each recipe includes:

Problem statement - What you’re trying to solve
Solution - Complete working code or configuration
Explanation - Why it works and how it works
Variations - Alternative approaches or extensions
Best practices - Tips and gotchas

graph LR A[Problem] --> B[Recipe] B --> C[Solution] C --> D[Working Code] D --> E[Explanation] E --> F[Best Practices] style A fill:#ffe1e1 style B fill:#fff4e1 style C fill:#e1f5ff style D fill:#e8f5e9 style E fill:#f3e5f5 style F fill:#fff4e1

Recipe Categories

Deployment Patterns

Recipes for deploying applications in different scenarios:

Blue-Green Deployments - Zero-downtime deployments with instant rollback
Canary Releases - Gradual traffic shifting for safe rollouts
Multi-Environment Deployments - Managing dev, staging, and production
Helm Chart Patterns - Reusable chart structures and best practices
Kustomize Overlays - Environment-specific configurations
Multi-Region Deployments - Distributing workloads across regions

Configuration Management

Recipes for managing application configuration:

ConfigMap Patterns - Different ways to use ConfigMaps
Secret Management - Secure secret handling and rotation
Environment Variables - Best practices for env var injection
Configuration Hot Reloading - Updating configs without pod restarts
Multi-Config Strategies - Combining multiple config sources

Networking & Services

Recipes for service discovery and networking:

Service Discovery Patterns - DNS-based and endpoint-based discovery
Ingress Configuration - Common ingress patterns and TLS setup
Network Policy Recipes - Implementing network segmentation
Load Balancing Strategies - Different approaches to traffic distribution
Service Mesh Integration - Connecting services with Istio, Linkerd

Storage & Data

Recipes for persistent storage and data management:

Dynamic Volume Provisioning - Setting up StorageClasses
Stateful Application Patterns - Running databases and stateful workloads
Backup Strategies - Automated backup solutions
Volume Migration - Moving data between storage backends
Shared Storage Patterns - ReadWriteMany volume usage

Security & RBAC

Recipes for securing your cluster and workloads:

RBAC Patterns - Common role and binding configurations
Pod Security Standards - Implementing security contexts
Network Policy Templates - Reusable network security rules
Secret Encryption - Encrypting secrets at rest
Service Account Patterns - Best practices for service accounts

Monitoring & Observability

Recipes for monitoring and troubleshooting:

Metrics Collection - Setting up Prometheus exporters
Log Aggregation - Centralized logging patterns
Health Check Patterns - Effective probe configurations
Alerting Rules - Common alert definitions
Tracing Setup - Distributed tracing configuration

Autoscaling & Performance

Recipes for optimizing resource usage:

HPA Configuration - Horizontal Pod Autoscaler patterns
VPA Setup - Vertical Pod Autoscaler recipes
Resource Optimization - Right-sizing requests and limits
Cluster Autoscaling - Node autoscaling patterns
Cost Optimization - Reducing resource waste

Troubleshooting Recipes

Quick solutions to common problems:

Pod Startup Issues - Debugging container startup failures
Network Connectivity - Diagnosing service communication problems
Storage Problems - Resolving volume mount issues
Scheduling Failures - Understanding why pods don’t schedule
Performance Issues - Identifying and fixing bottlenecks

GitOps & CI/CD

Recipes for automation and GitOps:

ArgoCD Application Patterns - Common application configurations
Flux Setup Recipes - GitOps automation patterns
CI/CD Integration - Connecting pipelines to Kubernetes
Multi-Repository Strategies - Managing complex GitOps setups
Automated Testing - Testing deployments in CI/CD

Multi-Cluster & Federation

Recipes for managing multiple clusters:

Cluster Federation - Cross-cluster deployment patterns
Multi-Cluster Networking - Connecting clusters
Centralized Management - Managing multiple clusters from one place
Disaster Recovery - Multi-cluster backup and restore

How to Use Recipes

Find the right recipe - Browse by category or search for your specific problem
Read the problem statement - Make sure it matches your scenario
Copy and adapt - Use the code as a starting point, adapt to your needs
Understand the explanation - Learn why it works, not just how
Check best practices - Avoid common pitfalls

Recipe Format

Each recipe follows a consistent structure:

# Recipe: [Name]
# Problem: [What problem this solves]
# Solution: [Brief description]

# YAML or code example here

# Explanation:
# [Why this works and key concepts]

# Variations:
# [Alternative approaches]

# Best Practices:
# [Tips and gotchas]

Coming Soon

We’re continuously adding new recipes based on common questions and real-world scenarios. Upcoming recipes include:

Advanced scheduling patterns
Custom resource definition examples
Operator development patterns
Service mesh advanced configurations
Cloud provider-specific recipes

Contributing Recipes

Have a recipe that solved a tricky problem? Share it with the community! Good recipes:

Solve a real, common problem
Include complete, working examples
Explain the “why” not just the “how”
Include best practices and gotchas

Tools & Add-ons - Tools that help implement recipes