Topic 5: Addons And Architecture Choices
Official baseline: (The Kubernetes Authors, 2026b, 2026a). My working version: The core cluster is intentionally incomplete. DNS, ingress, metrics, storage, and policy are choices you compose.
Mental Model
The core cluster is intentionally incomplete. DNS, ingress, metrics, storage, and policy are choices you compose.
Notes
- Addons should be treated as production dependencies, not decorative extras.
- Every addon adds an operational contract: upgrades, alerts, resource use, and failure modes.
- A homelab is a good place to test architecture taste before adopting tools at work.
Homelab Angle
Pick boring defaults first: CoreDNS, one ingress controller, one CNI, one storage class, and one observability path.
Verify It
- Read the object status before changing the manifest.
- Check events for the controller or node that is actually complaining.
- Confirm the official source linked below still matches the cluster version you run.
Common Failure Modes
- Treating the YAML object as the system, instead of one input to a reconciliation loop.
- Debugging from outside the cluster when the failure only exists inside cluster networking or node state.
- Forgetting that Kubernetes version, addon version, and runtime behavior are linked.
Sources
- Kubernetes Components - source path:
content/en/docs/concepts/overview/components.md, commit 8cc9e19b8eec8d5cf49eacd66f86a81648edb1a0. - Cluster Administration - source path:
content/en/docs/concepts/cluster-administration/_index.md, commit 8cc9e19b8eec8d5cf49eacd66f86a81648edb1a0. - Kubernetes documentation is licensed under CC BY 4.0; these notes are original commentary and link back to the official source.
The Kubernetes Authors. (2026a). Cluster Administration. https://kubernetes.io/docs/concepts/cluster-administration/
The Kubernetes Authors. (2026b). Kubernetes Components. https://kubernetes.io/docs/concepts/overview/components/