Bridging the Kubernetes Infrastructure Gap
Kubernetes is a powerful orchestrator, but by design, it expects key infrastructure components—such as ingress controllers, persistent storage, and load balancers—to be pre-existing.
For those operating in self-hosted or “on-prem” environments, providing these prerequisites in a way Kubernetes can consume can be a significant hurdle. Often, the time spent setting up a development or “lab” environment outweighs the time spent actually learning or deploying applications. MVK was created to bridge this gap, providing the “missing pieces” needed to make Kubernetes functional in any environment.
Minimal Viable Kubernetes is built on a foundation of simplicity and independence:
CLI Friendly & First: Optimized for developers who live in the terminal.
Infrastructure as Code: Promotes repeatable, documented deployments.
Universal Portability: Seamless movement across cloud and on-prem hardware.
Radical Openness: Keeping the stack simple to avoid proprietary “black boxes.”
Vendor Independence: Actively avoiding lock-in to any single provider.
Opinionated by Design
Section titled “Opinionated by Design”Inconsistency between development and production environments often leads to technical debt and “it works on my machine” syndrome. Conversely, production environments can easily become over-engineered and brittle.
MVK provides specific tooling and design patterns to solve these issues. It helps you create a minimal yet viable implementation that is lightweight enough for testing, but robust enough to be extended into production. By using a consistent footprint, you ensure that your deployment logic remains the same regardless of scale.
Use Cases
Section titled “Use Cases”MVK is specifically designed for entirely self-hosted environments. While managed cloud platforms are convenient, they are often proprietary and expensive.
Digital Sovereignty: Regain control over your data and infrastructure without relying on third-party service providers.
Cost Reduction: Minimize monthly cloud spend by leveraging existing hardware.
Skill Preservation: We believe everyone should understand the “how” behind Kubernetes. Deepening this knowledge ensures these vital engineering skills aren’t lost to automation.