Etcd on Support Tools

Kubernetes Fail Compilation: Critical Production Incidents from Crypto Miners to etcd Corruption

Tue, 25 Aug 2026 00:00:00 -0500

Over five years managing production Kubernetes clusters, I’ve witnessed spectacular failures that would make any Site Reliability Engineer’s blood run cold. From cryptocurrency miners consuming $45,000 in cloud compute costs in 72 hours, to complete cluster failures from IP address exhaustion, to etcd corruption taking down entire data centers - this is the unvarnished truth about Kubernetes in production. These are real incidents, real root causes, and real solutions that prevented future disasters.

This comprehensive guide documents the most critical Kubernetes production incidents we’ve encountered, providing detailed root cause analysis, incident response playbooks, prevention strategies, and security hardening procedures to protect your infrastructure from similar failures.

Building Scalable Kubernetes Operators in Go: Breaking Through ETCD Limitations

Thu, 11 Jun 2026 09:00:00 -0500

Kubernetes operators have revolutionized how we manage applications on Kubernetes, but they face significant scalability challenges when dealing with large datasets due to ETCD’s limitations. This article explores patterns and solutions for building truly scalable operators in Go, with practical approaches to handle high-volume data requirements.

RKE2 the Hard Way: Part 4 – Setting up etcd Cluster as Static Pods

Tue, 01 Apr 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Part 4 – Setting up etcd Cluster as Static Pods

In this part of the “RKE2 the Hard Way” training series, we will set up etcd as a clustered key-value store using static pods managed by kubelet. etcd is a consistent and highly-available key-value store used by Kubernetes to store all cluster data, including the state of the cluster, configuration data, and metadata.

In RKE2, etcd is deployed as a static pod managed by kubelet, instead of running directly as a systemd service. This makes it easier to manage, as kubelet handles lifecycle operations, restarts, and monitoring.

Understanding etcd in Kubernetes

Wed, 29 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Introduction

etcd is a distributed key-value store that serves as the backbone of Kubernetes. It stores all cluster configuration data, including resource definitions, state information, and access control policies.

In this deep dive, we’ll explore etcd’s architecture, how Kubernetes interacts with it, performance tuning, backup strategies, and high availability considerations.

What is etcd?

etcd is an open-source, strongly consistent, and highly available key-value store used for distributed systems coordination. Kubernetes relies on etcd to store and manage all cluster data, making it a critical component of the control plane.

Pulling Data from an etcd Backup: How to Extract a Secret from an etcd Snapshot Without Doing a Full Cluster Restore

Fri, 18 Oct 2024 19:26:00 -0500

In Kubernetes, etcd serves as the backend data store for all cluster state, including secrets, configuration data, and application state. But what happens if you need to pull a specific secret from an etcd snapshot without doing a full cluster restore? Fortunately, there’s a way to extract specific data from an etcd backup without impacting the entire cluster.

In this post, we’ll walk through how to pull a secret from an etcd snapshot, saving you from the complexity of restoring the entire cluster.

Monitor Etcd Cluster with Grafana and Prometheus in RKE2

Tue, 17 Sep 2024 19:26:00 -0500

Monitoring your Etcd cluster is critical to ensure the health of your Kubernetes infrastructure, especially in an RKE2 environment. In this post, we’ll explore how to monitor an Etcd cluster using Grafana and Prometheus, giving you real-time insights and alerting capabilities to prevent issues before they impact your cluster’s availability.

Replacing a Failed Control Plane Node in a HA Kubernetes Cluster

Thu, 05 Sep 2024 19:26:00 -0500

In this guide, we will walk through the process of replacing a failed control plane node in a highly available multi-master Kubernetes cluster.

Deep Dive into etcd and Kubernetes

Wed, 15 May 2024 04:00:00 -0500

This workshop provides an in-depth exploration of etcd and its critical role in Kubernetes. Participants will gain a comprehensive understanding of etcd, learn how to install and configure it, and practice essential tasks such as data manipulation, troubleshooting, performance tuning, and recovery.

How to change etcd cipher suite in Rancher / RKE

Sun, 28 Feb 2021 23:22:00 +0000

This article will walk Rancher administrators through hardening the cluster communication between etcd nodes. We’ll go over configuring etcd to use specific ciphers which enable stronger encryption for securing intra-cluster etcd traffic.

The cipher suites defined in the example could trade off speed for stronger encryption. Consider the level of ciphers in use and how they could impact the performance of an etcd cluster. Testing should be done to factor the spec of your hosts (cpu, memory, disk, network, etc…) and the typical types of interacting with kubernetes as well as the amount of resources under management within the k8s cluster.