Recently we’ve explored the evolving role of Kubernetes as a full ecosystem, rather than just a platform, diving into the power and complexity of add-ons. These tools, as highlighted previously, are key to augmenting Kubernetes core capabilities, and adding-on (as their name implies) essential capabilities not supported directly by Kubernetes itself. We zoomed in on the critical services of automating TLS certificate management and DNS record synchronization by highlighting the cert-manager and ExternalDNS add-ons, respectively. However, their growing importance comes with operational challenges that can spiral out of control when not properly managed. In this post, we’ll dive into how Komodor’s out-of-the-box ecosystem support can simplify Kubernetes operations by turning what, at times, can feel like the chaos of add-ons––into an efficient system where all your add-ons (cert-manager and ExternalDNS among them) work better together—with stability, reliability, and significantly reduced manual effort from your DevOps teams. Kubernetes Native Add-On Support for cert-manager and ExternalDNS with Komodor Managing Kubernetes clusters often feels like orchestrating a symphony, with each add-on playing a unique and specific role in keeping your systems running. Add-ons often aren’t just a simple integration where you can just deploy and forget––it’s always the management and maintenance of keeping them running where the effort can start to add up. Komodor’s extended capabilities are designed to simplify and optimize your end-to-end Kubernetes operations, offering deep, native intelligence for add-ons, CRDs, and Operators. As part of a broader mission to simplify Kubernetes operations as a whole, by making add-ons first-class citizens of your ecosystem—without the headache. In previous posts, we covered why add-ons like cert-manager and ExternalDNS are indispensable, while at the same time, their functionality comes with challenges that can bog down even the most seasoned DevOps teams. In case you missed it - a brief TL;DR of where they can break down: cert-manager: Misconfigured certificates can lead to application downtime or security vulnerabilities. Debugging issues like expired certificates or DNS-01 validation failures often require deep dives into logs and configurations. ExternalDNS: DNS propagation delays or API rate limits can result in outdated records, impacting service availability. Managing multiple DNS providers and ensuring records are synced across large-scale clusters is a daunting task. These tools, while powerful, demand constant attention to ensure they’re performing optimally. Without the right visibility and insights, even minor issues can escalate, disrupting your services and user experience. Overcoming Common Challenges with Kubernetes Operations Intelligence With the complexity of modern systems and cloud-native operations, engineering teams have learned the hard way that failures aren’t an ‘if’ anymore, they’re largely a ‘when’. And if you aren’t prepared with deep visibility into your unique bespoke system, you can have multiple teams spending hours on troubleshooting and debugging to get to the root cause. Take a common scenario. Imagine your checkout service goes down. Here’s what a typical manual troubleshooting procedure might look without a tool like Komodor: An alert indicates the checkout service is failing. The developer inspects the deployment and finds all pods are failing. Logs suggest the service can’t connect to the database. The database pods and logs seem fine, but connections have dropped to zero. The investigation expands to network policies, certificates, and DNS configurations. After 2 hours of back-and-forth between developers and DevOps, the root cause is identified: an expired TLS certificate due to a DNS-01 validation failure in cert-manager. This process—time-consuming and frustrating—highlights the complexity of managing add-ons without unified insights. This is an aggravatingly simple issue, and yet it requires 2 teams to be involved for ~2 hours & over 10 investigation steps to get to the root cause. How Komodor Helps With Komodor, we’ve reimagined how Kubernetes operators handle cert-manager and ExternalDNS. Our platform provides deep visibility, intelligent analysis, and actionable insights, turning hours of troubleshooting into minutes. A system issue triggers an automated investigation, where the symptoms are analyzed and the root cause is found and verified. The final result is an informative alert providing you with a lot more context into the issue, enabling teams to locate and handle the issue in your systems rapidly. Komodor’s add-on alerting capabilities in action: A cert-manager Example: With Komodor you are able to view certificate configurations, statuses, and expiration timelines from a single interface. Automatically detect and alert on validation failures or expired certificates. Assess the impact on downstream services. Leverage Komodor AI (Klaudia) for root cause analysis, pinpointing issues like misconfigured DNS-01 challenges. An ExternalDNS Example: The Komodor UI enables you to monitor sync status, configurations, and DNS records in real time. Detect API rate limits, propagation delays, and other risks proactively. Use metrics like “last sync attempt” and “managed records” to evaluate performance and reliability. A Use Case with Komodor: From Complexity to Simplicity Revisiting the earlier scenario with Komodor. Below is how the issue would be resolved with Komodor in 4 simple steps: Komodor detects the issue immediately, generating an alert with actionable insights. The root cause—an expired TLS certificate—is identified in minutes using Komodor’s RCA. The platform highlights related ExternalDNS and cert-manager configurations, showing a failed DNS-01 challenge due to a DNS provider issue. The team resolves the issue in 10 minutes, avoiding prolonged downtime and restoring the checkout service quickly. With Komodor, the investigation process becomes efficient, enabling teams to focus on strategic initiatives rather than firefighting. Our integration is more than a monitoring tool; it’s a holistic system that provides context, correlates events and simplifies workflows. Why Kubernetes Day-2 Ops Management Tooling is Essential at Scale As Kubernetes deployments grow, like a coral reef, the operational overhead of managing add-ons like cert-manager and ExternalDNS can spiral out of control. Komodor’s ecosystem support changes the game by: Providing a unified dashboard for all add-ons, ensuring visibility across clusters. Delivering intelligent, real-time insights that reduce troubleshooting time. Enhancing reliability with proactive alerts and deep analytics. Visualizing the cascading effects of K8s issues by connecting millions of disparate datapoints and drawing actionable insights for optimization Komodor empowers teams to manage Kubernetes at scale without sacrificing agility or stability. By turning complex operations into streamlined workflows, we’re making Kubernetes more accessible, reliable, and powerful for everyone. Ready to Simplify Your Kubernetes Journey? Experience the future of Kubernetes management with Komodor. Sign up for a 14-day free trial today and see how we can transform your operations. Visit Komodor’s website for more information and insights into managing your Kubernetes ecosystem with ease.
