Validation Playbook Format: Structuring Portable Validation Procedures

Validation Playbook Format#

A validation playbook is a structured procedure that tells an agent exactly how to validate a specific type of infrastructure change. The key problem it solves: the same validation (for example, “verify this Helm chart works”) requires different commands depending on whether the agent has access to kind, minikube, a cloud cluster, or nothing but a linter. A playbook encodes all path variants in one document so the agent picks the right commands for its environment.

Kubernetes Operator Development: Patterns, Frameworks, and Best Practices

Kubernetes Operator Development#

Operators are custom controllers that manage CRDs. They encode operational knowledge – the kind of tasks a human operator would perform – into software that runs inside the cluster. An operator watches for changes to its custom resources and reconciles the actual state to match the desired state, creating, updating, or deleting child resources as needed.

Operator Maturity Model#

The Operator Framework defines five maturity levels:

Level Capability Example
1 Basic install Helm operator deploys the application
2 Seamless upgrades Operator handles version migrations
3 Full lifecycle Backup, restore, failure recovery
4 Deep insights Exposes metrics, fires alerts, generates dashboards
5 Auto-pilot Auto-scaling, auto-healing, auto-tuning without human input

Most custom operators target Level 2-3. Levels 4-5 are typically reached by mature projects like the Prometheus Operator or Rook/Ceph.