KubeCon + CloudNativeCon North America 2019

While Kubernetes is stable, best practices for using it are a moving target. Some are generally applicable, others unique to a particular configuration or platform. Following best practices helps ensure workloads stay running as expected through cluster maintenance and upgrades, but checking them can feel like playing whack-a-mole in the dark.

This talk introduces a new open source tool, clusterlint, that checks compliance with best practices. Unlike other linters that work on deployment manifests, clusterlint identifies risks and problems in running Kubernetes clusters, making it useful for finding potential problems before performing cluster maintenance.

We'll discuss what clusterlint checks, why, how it works, how we use it in DigitalOcean's managed Kubernetes product to warn users of danger, and future plans for the tool.