Secure, Observable, Cost-Smart Platform—As Code
Kubernetes (K8s) gives you a standardized, portable runtime for containers—when designed with security, governance, and evidence baked in.
SolveForce builds Kubernetes platforms that are secure-by-default, GitOps-driven, observable, and cost-aware across AWS/EKS, Azure/AKS, GCP/GKE, and on-prem—wired to identity, keys, and policy so you can ship fast and pass audits.
How K8s fits the SolveForce system:
☁️ Platform → Cloud • 🛠️ IaC → Infrastructure as Code • 🚀 Pipelines → DevOps / CI-CD
🔐 Security → Cybersecurity • 🔑 Keys/Secrets → Key Management / HSM • Secrets Management • PKI • Encryption
📊 Evidence/Automation → SIEM / SOAR • 🧠 AI → Vector Databases & RAG
🎯 Outcomes (Why SolveForce K8s)
- Platform as code — clusters, add-ons, and policies are reproducible, reviewed, and versioned.
- Secure-by-default — mTLS, admission controls, allowed images, least privilege, and network segmentation.
- Observable & SLO-driven — golden signals, traces, and release markers tied to error budgets.
- Cost-smart — autoscaling, bin-packing, spot/priority, and right-sizing baked into the design.
- Audit-ready — every deploy and policy decision ships evidence to SIEM with change IDs.
🧭 Scope (What we build & operate)
- Clusters & node groups — managed control planes (EKS/AKS/GKE) and on-prem; Linux + optional Windows pools; GPU/accelerator pools.
- Networking (CNI) — CIDR & IPAM, NetworkPolicy, egress policies, Ingress/Layer-7 gateways.
- Service mesh (optional) — mTLS, L7 intent/policy, traffic splits, retries/timeouts, telemetry.
- Storage — CSI drivers, dynamic PVCs, snapshots/backup/restore.
- GitOps — Argo CD/Flux for declarative state; drift detection and reconcile.
- Security — admission control (Gatekeeper/Kyverno), image policy/attestations, secrets, RBAC, Pod Security, runtime controls.
- Observability — Prometheus/OTel metrics, logs, traces; dashboards, alerts, and SLOs.
- FinOps — HPA/VPA, Cluster Autoscaler/Karpenter, bin-packing, spot/priority classes.
🧱 Building Blocks (Spelled out)
- Provisioning & IaC — Terraform/CloudFormation/Bicep/Pulumi + cluster add-on managers; remote state + Object Lock. → Infrastructure as Code
- Identity & RBAC — OIDC federation, short-lived tokens, groups→roles mapping, namespace tenancy. → IAM / SSO / MFA
- Networking — CNI (VPC-CNI/Cilium/Calico), NetworkPolicy default-deny, egress allow-lists, private endpoints.
- Ingress/L7 — Ingress controller or Gateway API; WAF at the edge; mTLS to services where required. → WAF / Bot Management
- Certificates/PKI — cluster & mesh mTLS, service cert rotation (SPIFFE/SVID or ACME). → PKI
- Secrets — CSI Secrets Store, vault sidecar, Transit encryption; no plaintext in manifests. → Secrets Management • Encryption
- Supply chain — SBOMs (SPDX/CycloneDX), image signatures (Cosign/Sigstore), admission verify + policy as code.
- Policies — Gatekeeper/Kyverno guardrails (proc caps, root fs ro, host-net/IPC bans, trusted registries, labels/owners).
- Runtime — seccomp, AppArmor, read-only FS, minimal capabilities, eBPF runtime sensors.
🏗️ Reference Architectures
A) Internet-facing microservices (cloud-native)
- EKS/AKS/GKE with Ingress/Gateway → service mesh (mTLS, retries) → HPA/VPA + Cluster Autoscaler → WAF/CDN at edge; GitOps deploys.
- Policies: default-deny NetworkPolicy, signed images only, Pod Security “restricted”.
B) Data & AI platform
- Stateful sets (DB operators), object storage CSI, snapshots; dbt/SQL jobs on dedicated pools; GPU pools for training; vector DB for RAG.
→ Data Warehouse / Lakes • ETL / ELT • Vector Databases & RAG
C) Regulated workloads (PCI/HIPAA/NIST)
- Private clusters; CMK/HSM keys; Pod Security restricted; logging to WORM; ZTNA/SASE for admin; evidence packs.
→ Key Management / HSM • SIEM / SOAR • SASE • ZTNA
D) Hybrid/on-prem with cloud burst
- On-prem clusters for data gravity; cloud clusters for elastic jobs; secure interconnect; shared GitOps; consistent policies across fleets.
→ Direct Connect • Colocation
🔒 Security & Zero-Trust (Concrete controls)
- Admission — deny unsigned/unattested images; enforce labels/owners; block privileged pods/hostPath; PSL “restricted”.
- Identity — OIDC SSO/MFA for humans; service identity via SPIFFE or short-lived certs/tokens.
- Network — default-deny; only declared Service→Service flows; egress DNS/TLS allow-lists. → Microsegmentation
- Boundary — WAF/Bot at edge; origins cloaked; mTLS north-south to services. → WAF / Bot Management
- Secrets — vault + CSI; rotated and short-lived; Transit for encryption. → Secrets Management
- Keys — HSM/KMS custody; envelope encryption; dual-control. → Key Management / HSM
- Ops safety — break-glass via PAM; session-recorded; cluster admin separated. → PAM
📦 Storage & Backup/DR
- CSI drivers — dynamic PVCs; snapshot/restore classes; topology-aware provisioning.
- Backups — Velero-style or vendor; etcd + PVC snapshots; restore drills with artifacts.
- DR patterns — app-level replication; multi-region clusters; failover runbooks.
→ Cloud Backup • DRaaS
📈 Observability & SLOs
- Metrics — Prometheus/OTel + recording rules; golden signals (latency, traffic, errors, saturation).
- Traces/logs — OpenTelemetry → backend; correlate with release markers; error budgets drive rollouts.
- Dashboards & alerts — per service/team; SLO widgets; alert on saturation and 95p/99p tail.
- SIEM — audit, kube-api, admission, image policy, and network denies to SIEM; SOAR handles rollback/quarantine. → SIEM / SOAR
📐 SLO Guardrails (Experience & safety you can measure)
| SLO / KPI | Target (Recommended) |
|---|---|
| Pod start (p95) | ≤ 5–15 s (image cached), ≤ 30–60 s (cold) |
| Deployment success rate | ≥ 99% (post-canary) |
| Admission policy eval (p95) | ≤ 100–300 ms |
| P99 service latency budget add | ≤ +5–15 ms from mesh/L7 polices |
| Cluster availability | ≥ 99.9–99.99% (control plane) |
| Image pull time (p95) | ≤ 3–10 s (with registry cache) |
| Evidence completeness (releases) | 100% (plan, tests, approvals, logs) |
SLO breaches pause promotions and trigger SOAR (rollback, scale, or route-shift). → SIEM / SOAR
💰 FinOps (Cost that behaves)
- Right-size requests/limits; VPA hints; bin-packing with topology spread.
- Autoscaling — HPA (CPU/QPS/custom), VPA (recommend/apply), Cluster Autoscaler/Karpenter.
- Spot/priority — mix spot/ondemand; PDBs & priorities; disruption budgets.
- Caching & images — local registry caches; layer reuse; buildx/cache-to-from in CI.
→ FinOps
🧰 Supply Chain & CI-CD
- SBOM on every build; dependency scanning; license policy gates.
- Image signing with Cosign; verify in admission; attestations for provenance.
- Progressive delivery — canary/blue-green/traffic splits; auto-rollback on SLO dip.
- GitOps — PR-gated desired state; drift detection & reconcile; evidence to SIEM.
→ DevOps / CI-CD • SIEM / SOAR
📜 Compliance Mapping (Examples)
- PCI DSS — segmentation, encryption, WAF evidence, audit logs/export.
- HIPAA — least privilege, secrets custody, immutable logs, DR drills.
- ISO 27001 — ops security, access control, change evidence.
- NIST 800-53/171 — AC/AU/SC/CM families; admission + logging.
- CMMC — configuration & access maturity; evidence packs exportable.
🛠️ Implementation Blueprint (No-Surprise Rollout)
- Assess & target — apps, SLOs, compliance, tenancy model (namespaces/orgs).
- Provision clusters/node pools as code; private endpoints; baseline add-ons. → Infrastructure as Code
- Identity & policy — OIDC federation; RBAC; Gatekeeper/Kyverno rules; PSL restricted. → IAM / SSO / MFA
- Networking — CNI + NetworkPolicy default-deny; egress allow-lists; Ingress/WAF/CDN. → WAF / Bot Management
- Secrets & keys — vault + CSI; Transit; CMK/HSM; rotate. → Secrets Management • Key Management / HSM
- Supply chain — SBOM, signing, admission verify; registry policies.
- Observability — metrics/logs/traces + release markers; SLO dashboards; exports to SIEM. → SIEM / SOAR
- Backups & DR — etcd/PVC snapshots; restore drills; artifacts archived. → Cloud Backup • DRaaS
- Operate & tune — weekly posture/cost review; drift fixes; publish RCAs & improvements.
✅ Pre-Engagement Checklist
- ☑️ Target clouds/regions, cluster count, tenancy model (ns/org).
- ☑️ SLOs for pod start, latency budgets, availability.
- ☑️ Identity/RBAC mapping; admin vs developer roles; break-glass via PAM. → PAM
- ☑️ CNI choice, NetworkPolicy defaults, egress policy, Ingress/WAF.
- ☑️ Secrets/keys plan (vault + CSI, CMK/HSM), registry & signing policy.
- ☑️ GitOps & pipeline readiness; SBOM/signing; policy as code.
- ☑️ Backup/DR requirements; restore evidence cadence.
- ☑️ Cost guardrails; autoscaling strategy; spot/priority policy.
🔄 Where Kubernetes Fits (Recursive View)
1) Grammar — runs atop Connectivity & Networks & Data Centers.
2) Syntax — a key pattern in Cloud, declared via IaC.
3) Semantics — Cybersecurity enforces truth (admission, identity, encryption).
4) Pragmatics — SolveForce AI predicts risk/cost, flags drift, and assists rollouts.
5) Foundation — consistent terms via Primacy of Language and ontology.
6) Map — indexed in the SolveForce Codex & Knowledge Hub.
📞 Launch Kubernetes That’s Secure, Fast & Auditable
Related pages:
Cloud • Infrastructure as Code • DevOps / CI-CD • SIEM / SOAR • Cybersecurity • Secrets Management • Key Management / HSM • PKI • Encryption • Microsegmentation • Vector Databases & RAG • Data Warehouse / Lakes • Knowledge Hub