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Pain Points Persist as Reliance on Kubernetes Rises

Updated 8/21/2025
https://cloudnativenow.com/features/pain-points-persist-as-reliance-on-kubernetes-rises/

Conducted by Traefik Labs, a provider of application networking software for microservices, the survey also finds 60% of respondents are running two or more Kubernetes clusters. ... A total of 44% of respondents also note cost management causes friction as they scale and expand their Kubernetes clusters. Other issues include securing applications and integrating third-party tracing systems tied at 33% each. Not surprisingly, the top pain point cited by respondents (43%) is setup and configuration, followed by maintenance and having too many platforms at 28% each. Half of respondents (50%) also said they still log in directly into their clusters to review logs manually when issues arise. The most widely employed management tools are Grafana and Prometheus at 74% and 68%, respectively. Finally, 60% of respondents note they are also employing multiple ingress controllers.

Related Pain Points5

Complex surrounding infrastructure requiring deep expertise

8

The real challenge in Kubernetes deployment goes beyond cluster setup to configuring RBAC, secrets management, and infrastructure-as-code. Teams without prior experience make decisions that require painful redesigns later, as shown by organizations requiring 50% of their year dedicated to cluster maintenance.

configKubernetesRBACIaC

Operational toil and fragmented incident response workflows

7

Manual deployments, inconsistent workflows, and fragmented observability across tools increase on-call load and MTTR. Engineers jump between tools during incidents instead of fixing issues, driving burnout and slower delivery due to constant firefighting.

monitoringKubernetes

Application security and third-party integration challenges

7

33% of respondents cite securing applications and integrating third-party tracing systems as pain points. Security has emerged as the #1 concern for DoK workloads, driven by complexity of securing distributed data workloads and regulatory compliance.

securityKubernetes

Massive cluster resource overprovisioning and wasted spending

6

99.94% of Kubernetes clusters are over-provisioned with CPU utilization at ~10% and memory at ~23%, meaning nearly three-quarters of allocated cloud spend sits idle. More than 65% of workloads run under half their requested resources, and 82% are overprovisioned.

performanceKubernetes

Multiple ingress controller management and networking complexity

5

60% of respondents employ multiple ingress controllers, adding operational complexity and potential inconsistency in application networking configuration and management across clusters.

configKubernetes