Kubernetes Migration Readiness

Planning workload moves into Kubernetes with Assistance support boundaries

Kubernetes migration is a staged operating change, not only a manifest conversion exercise. Assistance helps assess workload fit, design the target platform, prepare containers and delivery workflows, plan cutovers, and operate the agreed Kubernetes boundary after go-live.

When to migrate#

Situation	Migration fit
Services already containerized	Good candidate when deployment, secrets, and health checks are documented
VM or PaaS workloads need more control	Good candidate after dependency, data, and support boundaries are mapped
Teams want GitOps and standardized delivery	Good candidate when repository ownership and promotion rules are clear
Stateful or legacy workloads	Assess carefully; data migration, storage, and rollback may dominate the plan
Application has no owner or tests	Not ready for managed migration without remediation work

What Assistance operates#

Area	Assistance responsibility
Assessment	workload inventory, dependency map, risk review, platform fit, and migration sequence recommendation
Target platform	cluster architecture, GitOps or CI/CD path, ingress, TLS, DNS, observability, and secrets integration where scoped
Migration planning	rollout pattern, rollback plan, maintenance window, data handoff, and validation checklist
Platform operation	Kubernetes cluster, add-ons, monitoring, upgrades, and incident triage inside the managed boundary
Handoff	runbooks, dashboards, architecture notes, ownership matrix, and post-migration improvement backlog

What the customer owns#

Area	Customer responsibility
Application readiness	code changes, Dockerfiles, health endpoints, migrations, tests, and release approval
Data correctness	data classification, migration acceptance, retention, and business validation
Business impact	user communications, cutover approval, rollback decisions, and success criteria
Access and governance	repository permissions, user approvals, compliance requirements, and provider account ownership
Product behavior	performance expectations, feature flags, dependency compatibility, and customer-facing outcomes

Avoid unsupported savings or uptime assumptions

Migration can improve reliability, delivery consistency, or operational control, but cost and availability outcomes depend on workload design, platform scope, provider constraints, and customer responsibilities. Assistance confirms targets per engagement rather than making generic guarantees.

Migration phases#

1. Discovery and readiness#

Assistance reviews applications, dependencies, network paths, data stores, images, CI/CD, secrets, traffic, compliance constraints, and current incidents. The output is a migration candidate list with risk, effort, owners, and non-goals.

2. Platform and workload design#

We define cluster model, namespaces, ingress, DNS, TLS, registry, GitOps, observability, backup, rollback, and support model. Application teams confirm resource needs, health checks, data handling, and release process.

3. Build and pilot#

Assistance builds or prepares the target platform and migrates a low-risk service first. The pilot validates image workflow, deployment path, logs, metrics, alerts, access, and rollback.

4. Staged migration#

Workloads move in agreed waves using blue/green, canary, rolling, parallel-run, or maintenance-window cutovers based on risk. Each wave has acceptance checks and a rollback owner.

5. Operate and improve#

After go-live, Assistance operates the platform boundary, reviews incidents, tracks capacity, schedules maintenance, and maintains a migration follow-up backlog.

Migration request types#

Request	Normal evidence needed
New workload onboarding	owner, repo, image, manifest/chart, dependencies, resource estimate, health checks, rollback plan
Ingress or DNS cutover	hostname, certificate path, traffic plan, TTL strategy, rollback target, approver
Stateful workload migration	data owner, backup, restore test, downtime tolerance, validation criteria, rollback plan
Platform change	impact, maintenance window, version/add-on change, affected workloads, validation checks

Not included by default#

rewriting applications to be cloud native
guaranteeing zero downtime for workloads that cannot support it
owning product data correctness or customer communications
unlimited performance tuning after migration
accepting production workload ownership without application owners and rollback plans

Getting started#

Start with a migration readiness assessment. Assistance will identify candidate workloads, risks, ownership gaps, platform needs, and a staged migration path.

Request migration assessment →