How Our Love of Dogfooding Led to a Full-Scale Kubernetes Migration

Migrating to Kubernetes from Amazon EC2, orchestrated via Terraform and Chef, allowed Honeycomb to better scale and manage their infrastructure, aligning with the increased adoption of containerized applications predicted by Gartner. Despite the operational complexities introduced by Kubernetes, the migration was driven by the need for a more reliable and scalable system, as well as to gain firsthand experience with a technology heavily utilized by their customers. The process involved tackling the most challenging components first, seeking external expertise for specific tasks, and utilizing Honeycomb's own observability tools to ensure seamless transitions and solve unexpected issues. The migration not only improved system efficiency, particularly seen in the reduction of Shepherd's scale-up time from 15 minutes to 2 minutes, but also provided critical insights into building safer systems and addressing scaling challenges, which were previously problematic.