6.3 Running Kubernetes without running the control plane
You can deploy to a managed cluster, roll out a change, and roll it back when it breaks.
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A managed control plane takes the hardest part of Kubernetes off your hands and leaves the rest, and this topic maps that remainder: rolling updates, readiness probes, rollbacks that work under pressure, Helm charts for templated configuration, and the upgrade treadmill of deprecated APIs. It follows the concepts topic because operations only make sense over understood objects. The lesson with the longest life is the rollback — a deployment strategy is only real once you have rolled back with it, and the middle of an incident is the wrong time to find out.
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Managed control planes and what they still leave to you
A managed cluster removes the work of running the control plane and leaves you the worker nodes, the workloads and the upgrades. Knowing precisely what remains yours prevents an unpleasant discovery.
Rolling updates, readiness probes and rollbacks
A rolling update replaces instances gradually, readiness checks decide when a new one may receive traffic, and a rollback returns to the previous state. Together they are what makes a deployment reversible.
Helm charts and templated configuration
Templated packaging lets one set of manifests serve several environments with different values. It is the standard answer to copying and editing configuration files.
Cluster upgrades and the deprecation treadmill
Clusters are upgraded regularly and interfaces are removed on a schedule, so manifests that worked last year may not apply next year. Keeping up is ongoing work rather than a one-off migration.
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