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GOV.UK Kubernetes cluster documentation for developers
Kubernetes/EKS cheatsheet for GOV.UK developers
Prerequisites
Common tasks
View recent logs for an app
Open a Rails console
Open a shell in an app container
Open a shell on Router
List the available Rake tasks for an app
Run a Rake task
App releases and rollouts / deployments
Smokey test logs
Dashboards
Kubernetes Job Requests
Job Request Architecture
Job Request User Guide
Terminology
What is this guide
Prerequisites
Important notes and Limitations
Usage
Creating a JobRequest
Find the name of a deployment or pod
Reviewing a JobRequest
Using Kubectl to view JobRequests and JobRequestReviews
Viewing a JobRequest or JobRequestReview
Listing JobRequests or JobRequestReviews
Showing the Job that was launched from a JobRequest
Viewing the logs for the Job that was launched from a JobRequest
Installing govuk-cli
Before you start
Create a new application
Assumptions
Create a new GOV.UK repository for your application
Set up Sentry for your application
Set up CI for your application
Allow your application to be built as a Docker image
Add GitHub Actions workflows
Deploy app to environments
Creating your first release
Add image tag files to govuk-helm-charts
Add initial secrets to AWS Secrets Manager
Rails
Sentry
Add app to app-config chart values
Validate your deployment
Congratulations!
Annex: boilerplate files
Dockerfile
.dockerignore
CI workflow
Deploy workflow
Release workflow
Get started
Tutorials
Deploy a new version of the example test app, check the deployment, monitor the app on Grafana and view application logs
Maintenance
Update an application’s environment configuration
Set up tools to use the GOV.UK Kubernetes platform
Install kubectl
Install Helm
Install Argo CLI
Install gds-cli and aws-vault
Install gds-cli
Install aws-vault
Access a GOV.UK EKS cluster
Prerequisites
Set up all three GOV.UK EKS clusters for the first time
Access a GOV.UK EKS cluster that you have configured already
Choosing the correct role for accessing the cluster
Working with multiple clusters at once
Manage your app
Get information about your app
Choose and set a namespace
Get a list of all deployed apps in a namespace
Describe an app deployment
List all pods in an app
Describe a pod
View app logs
View Kubernetes events
Via logit
Via kubectl (only the last 1 hour)
View Out of Memory Events
Further information
Manage state in your app
Troubleshooting
Argo application sync stuck waiting for “waiting for completion of hook”
Set or change an environment variable for your app
Update an ordinary (non-secret) environment variable
Per-app environment variables
Global environment variables
Update an environment variable from a Secrets Manager secret
Scale your app
Scaling your app
What you can scale
Vertically scaling your app
Horizontally scaling your app
How scaling your app affects platform resources
Roll back your app
Updating the image tag to an older release
Triggering the deploy GitHub Action to deploy an older release
Re-enabling automatic image updates after manual deploys
Set security restrictions for your app
Add secrets to your app
Creating the secret in AWS Secrets Manager
Creating an AWS managed database secret
Creating a non-database secret
Defining an ExternalSecret in Kubernetes
Use the Kubernetes secret inside the app
Supporting information
Create a new environment
Create a new AWS account
Create secrets for the new environment
Deploy the Terraform modules
1. Deploy the ecr module
2. Deploy the cluster-infrastructure module
Delete the aws-auth configmap
3. Deploy the govuk-publishing-infrastructure module
4. Deploy the cluster-services module
Check the environment is working
Setting access permissions
Supporting information
Healthchecks
Choosing a different healthcheck endpoint
Kubernernetes Probes
Startup Probe
Readiness Probe
Liveness Probe
Probe lifecycle
Fix your app
Fixing an app’s configuration
Allocating more resources to an app
Giving an app access to required AWS services
If you suspect a problem with the cluster itself
General debugging
Getting logs for your apps
Creating a shell inside a running container
Port-forwarding to a pod
Following a troubleshooting guide
How the platform works
Platform cluster add-ons
External secrets
ExternalDNS
AWS load balancer controller
Cluster autoscaler
Dex OpenID connect provider
AWS EBS CSI Driver
Platform cluster user authentication
GOV.UK Platform Engineering team
Get in touch
What we can help with
How to disable or re-enable an app in EKS
Pre-requisites
Disabling an app
Re-enabling an app
Create a new database on the GOV.UK Kubernetes Platform
Creating readonly credentials for your RDS database
Conventions
Prerequisites
Get the secrets you will need
Connect to the RDS instance as the admin user
Create the readonly user and grant privileges
Add your database to the list of external secrets to be provisioned
Generating a password for the database user
Last updated:
7 Sep 2026
Job Request Architecture
Coming soon…