Project KubeShift

The challenge

The application ran on a Platform-as-a-Service environment. It made initial deployment easier, but limited control over runtime configuration, scaling behaviour, portability and observability. The goal was a standardised delivery model that could support more services without a risky rewrite.

The modernisation path

Kovift began by assessing runtime dependencies, ports and operating assumptions. The application was packaged into a reproducible container image, then introduced to Kubernetes with networking, configuration, health behaviour and scaling defined declaratively.

1. Containerise: preserve business behaviour in a portable image.
2. Kubernetesise: define Deployment, Service, Ingress, ConfigMaps, Secrets and resource policies.
3. Automate: connect source control to build, test, image publication and deployment workflows.
4. Harden: add readiness and liveness probes, rolling releases and horizontal pod autoscaling.
5. Validate: test functional behaviour, recovery and scaling before adopting the target runtime.

The engineering model

Every release becomes an immutable versioned container image. Kubernetes manifests define desired application state while configuration stays outside the image. Readiness checks control traffic, liveness checks support recovery and autoscaling adds replicas as demand changes. Together, these patterns create a reusable operating model rather than a one-off hosting move.

The outcome

The project replaced a platform-specific deployment process with a portable, declarative approach. It established automated delivery, health-aware traffic management, elastic capacity and repeatable patterns for future applications and environments.