Kubernetes Production Readiness Checklist

# Kubernetes production readiness

## Ownership and release
- [ ] Service owner and on-call route are recorded
- [ ] Image is pinned to an immutable digest
- [ ] Rollback trigger and rollback procedure are tested
- [ ] Deployment strategy and maximum unavailable capacity are approved

## Scheduling and resources
- [ ] CPU and memory requests reflect measured normal load
- [ ] Limits have been load-tested for throttling and OOM behaviour
- [ ] Pod topology, affinity and tolerations match the failure model
- [ ] PodDisruptionBudget permits maintenance without blocking all eviction

## Health and shutdown
- [ ] Startup, readiness and liveness probes test distinct conditions
- [ ] Probe timing reflects measured startup and recovery behaviour
- [ ] SIGTERM handling and termination grace period are tested
- [ ] The Pod stops receiving traffic before destructive shutdown work

## Security and configuration
- [ ] ServiceAccount has only the required RBAC verbs and resources
- [ ] Secrets are not embedded in images, manifests or logs
- [ ] Security context and filesystem permissions are explicit
- [ ] NetworkPolicy behaviour is tested where enforcement is expected

## Observability and recovery
- [ ] Logs, metrics and traces identify the service, version and environment
- [ ] Alerts use customer-impact or exhaustion signals with owned runbooks
- [ ] Backup and restore are tested for stateful dependencies
- [ ] Failure of every required dependency has a documented response