How Qovery Automates Hundreds of Production‑Ready Kubernetes Clusters

Key Points

Deploying a production‑ready Kubernetes cluster manually can take several days.

Without automation, managing a single cluster is difficult; managing hundreds is far harder.

Upgrading clusters requires extensive testing; it’s not a simple “press upgrade” operation.

Managing a Kubernetes cluster is hard; managing hundreds worldwide is even harder.

Qovery operates hundreds of production Kubernetes clusters on AWS, serving over 16,000 developers.

Background

Qovery enables users to deploy applications on AWS within seconds, targeting developers accustomed to Heroku’s simplicity while leveraging AWS’s flexibility. It uses Amazon EKS for running stateless workloads, and each user may have one or more clusters. The Qovery Engine, an open‑source Rust application, handles cluster provisioning and management.

Deploying a Production‑Ready Kubernetes Cluster

The Qovery Engine, built in Rust, automates the creation of VPCs, EKS clusters, ingress controllers, autoscalers, Loki, and S3 storage using Terraform, Helm, and the AWS API. This reduces the time to obtain a production‑ready cluster on AWS from weeks to about 30 minutes.

Running Kubernetes

Because Qovery relies on AWS‑managed EKS, the operational burden is reduced: etcd, master nodes, and network overlays are managed by AWS, ensuring continuous cluster availability.

Qovery adds value by simplifying application deployment and providing real‑time reporting of both application and cluster health via the Qovery Engine and Qovery Agent.

Keeping Kubernetes Up‑to‑Date

Kubernetes releases a new version roughly every ten weeks, making timely upgrades challenging. Qovery maintains a dedicated team that tests upgrades on temporary clusters before rolling them out. The Qovery Engine receives update commands from the control plane and performs rolling updates of worker nodes and related components such as Loki and ingress controllers.

Conclusion

This article shows how Qovery’s open‑source Rust engine automates the deployment, operation, and upgrade of hundreds of Kubernetes clusters, saving massive time and ensuring high availability.