Kubernetes on OVHcloud: managed service or own cluster?

Building Kubernetes on OVHcloud with explicit operational ownership? WZ-IT designs managed and self-managed architectures, integrates networking and platform services, and can operate GitOps, monitoring, backup and workloads. Explore Kubernetes on OVHcloud

OVHcloud Managed Kubernetes Service provides a managed control plane and integrated Public Cloud resources. This reduces the work required to install and maintain central Kubernetes components. Responsibility for cluster configuration, workers, workloads, data and recovery nevertheless remains partly or entirely with the customer.

The core architecture question is therefore not merely "managed or self-managed?" but: Which layer does OVHcloud own, which does WZ-IT operate and which remains with the application team?

Contents

• Three operating models
• What OVHcloud MKS manages
• What remains despite the managed service
• Networking with vRack and public endpoints
• Node pools, load balancers and storage
• Identity, GitOps and security
• Backup and disaster recovery
• MKS or a self-managed cluster?

Three operating models

The managed service is often the shortest route to a standardized OVHcloud platform. A self-managed cluster can fit when the control plane must remain directly controlled, special node or network models are required or Kubernetes must integrate with an existing Proxmox private cloud.

What OVHcloud MKS manages

OVHcloud Managed Kubernetes Service provides clusters with a managed control plane. Its product page lists node pools, autoscaling, load-balancer and storage integration, private networking, and Infrastructure as Code using Terraform.

The control plane includes core components such as the API server, etcd and controllers. Availability models and service levels vary by plan and region. Those details should be checked against the current service description and available regions during architecture design.

A managed control-plane lifecycle primarily reduces work for:

• installing and making the Kubernetes control plane highly available,
• maintaining central Kubernetes components,
• providing supported Kubernetes versions,
• integrating node pools with OVHcloud Public Cloud.

What remains despite the managed service

OVHcloud describes a shared-responsibility model on its product page: the provider maintains the control plane while customers remain responsible for the security of worker nodes, containers and Pods, infrastructure sizing and data protection.

A production platform therefore still requires:

• namespaces, quotas and tenant separation,
• roles, service accounts and OIDC integration,
• Network Policies and egress rules,
• ingress, DNS and certificates,
• container registry and image security,
• GitOps and delivery processes,
• metrics, logs, traces and alerting,
• backups, restore tests and disaster recovery,
• upgrades for all add-ons and applications.

"Managed Kubernetes" does not automatically mean fully managed applications. Scope must be named for every layer.

Networking with vRack and public endpoints

OVHcloud vRack connects compatible cloud and dedicated resources through a private network. A Kubernetes architecture can use it to separate:

• node and cluster traffic,
• access to databases and internal backends,
• connections between Public Cloud and dedicated servers,
• management access,
• public application entry points.

Public applications are exposed through defined load balancers and ingress or gateway components. The Kubernetes API, Argo CD, Grafana and internal services can remain on restricted networks and additionally be made accessible through NetBird.

Outbound traffic also belongs in the design. Stable egress addresses, firewall rules and access to external dependencies can matter as much as inbound traffic.

Node pools, load balancers and storage

MKS node pools use OVHcloud Public Cloud instances. Separate pools can isolate workloads by resource profile, availability requirement or trust zone. Taints, tolerations, affinity rules and PodDisruptionBudgets translate this infrastructure layout into Kubernetes rules.

OVHcloud integrates load balancers and storage classes with the managed service. Teams must still decide:

• Which services are public and which remain private?
• How do TLS, DNS and a web application firewall integrate?
• Which data uses persistent volumes and which uses managed databases?
• Which workloads need multiple availability zones?
• How do applications respond to node, zone or storage failure?

A highly available control plane does not automatically make an application highly available. Replicas, topology spread constraints, database design and restart behaviour must be planned at workload level.

Identity, GitOps and security

OVHcloud lists OpenID Connect integration. Kubernetes RBAC complements the identity layer. A robust model separates human users, CI/CD identities and workload identities.

GitOps with Argo CD or Flux keeps platform and applications versioned. This typically includes:

• namespaces and policies,
• ingress and gateway configuration,
• cert-manager and DNS automation,
• monitoring and logging components,
• Helm releases and application manifests,
• secrets as encrypted or externally managed references.

Policy engines such as Kyverno or OPA Gatekeeper can validate technical baselines. They replace neither an identity model nor regular review of images, dependencies and cluster configuration.

Backup and disaster recovery

OVHcloud documents several MKS backup paths, including Velero and volume snapshots. The selected solution must cover every relevant data layer:

1. Kubernetes resources and Custom Resources,
2. persistent volumes,
3. application-consistent database backups,
4. external secrets, registries and Git repositories,
5. Infrastructure-as-Code configuration for rebuilding the environment.

A backup is dependable only after recovery into a defined target environment has been tested. Regional failure planning must also determine whether images, backups, DNS and keys remain available outside the same failure boundary.

MKS or a self-managed cluster?

WZ-IT can support both MKS and self-managed clusters. The focus is the transition from infrastructure to a usable application platform: networking, GitOps, identity, observability, backup and operations are designed together with explicit ownership.

Sources

• OVHcloud Managed Kubernetes Service
• OVHcloud Managed Kubernetes documentation
• OVHcloud Professional Services for Kubernetes
• OVHcloud vRack
• Kubernetes security concepts