- Blog
- Scaling Kubernetes with Confidence Using Datadog
Picture a leading FinTech company running 500+ Kubernetes clusters across AWS EKS and Google GKE. Their modern infrastructure powered millions of financial transactions daily, but they had a growing problem—intermittent performance issues, frequent service disruptions, and a lack of real-time visibility into cluster health. These disruptions weren’t just frustrating for engineers; they were directly impacting transaction success rates and SLA commitments.
They needed a scalable observability solution that could provide deep visibility into their Kubernetes environment, proactively detect performance anomalies, and reduce incident resolution time.
That’s why EverOps was brought in. With a proven track record in Kubernetes observability and deep expertise in Datadog’s monitoring capabilities, we were selected to overhaul their observability strategy and enable proactive system reliability.
The Technical Solution: How We Used Datadog to Scale Kubernetes with Confidence
EverOps designed a comprehensive Kubernetes observability framework using Datadog’s Kubernetes Monitoring, Live Container View, Auto-Discovery, and AI-driven anomaly detection. Here’s what we did:
Datadog Kubernetes Monitoring: Deep Insights Into Cluster Health
- We deployed Datadog’s Kubernetes Monitoring to track CPU/memory utilization, pod status, node health, and cluster resource efficiency in real time.
- Engineers gained immediate visibility into bottlenecks that previously went undetected.
- Automated alerts were set up for OOM (Out-of-Memory) issues, pod evictions, and CPU throttling events.
Live Container View & Auto-Discovery: Zero Manual Intervention
- We configured Live Container View to give teams an instant visual of running containers, resource usage, and service dependencies.
- Datadog’s Auto-Discovery feature was enabled to automatically detect new services and pods—reducing manual setup and ensuring observability at scale.
Service Maps & Distributed Tracing: Connecting Infrastructure and Applications
- We integrated Datadog’s APM (Application Performance Monitoring) with Kubernetes Monitoring to trace transactions across microservices.
- This allowed teams to correlate application slowdowns with infrastructure issues, reducing guesswork in troubleshooting.
- Service Maps helped engineers visually understand dependencies between services and detect latency hotspots.
AI-Driven Anomaly Detection with Watchdog
- Datadog’s Watchdog AI was implemented to detect unusual patterns in application and cluster performance before incidents occurred.
- Engineers received proactive alerts with actionable insights, helping prevent failures rather than react to them.
SLO Dashboards & Alerting Strategy
- We worked with the client to define SLOs (Service Level Objectives) and SLIs (Service Level Indicators) for Kubernetes workloads.
- Custom dashboards and alerts were created to reduce noise—ensuring teams focused on mission-critical incidents only.
The Business Outcome: Reliability at Scale
- System reliability increased from 99.5% to 99.99%, drastically reducing unplanned downtime.
- Incident resolution time (MTTR) improved by 60%, as engineers pinpointed root causes faster.
- Developers spent 40% less time troubleshooting Kubernetes issues, allowing them to focus on feature development.
- Customer transaction success rates increased, leading to higher SLA adherence and improved trust with financial partners.
- The company shifted from reactive troubleshooting to a proactive reliability engineering culture, ensuring long-term scalability.
A leading FinTech company operating 500+ Kubernetes clusters faced performance bottlenecks, frequent service disruptions, and a lack of visibility into their complex environment. They needed a scalable observability solution to detect anomalies, improve troubleshooting, and enhance system reliability. EverOps deployed Datadog’s Kubernetes Monitoring, Live Container View, Auto-Discovery, Service Maps, and AI-driven anomaly detection, giving teams real-time insights into cluster health, automated service discovery, and proactive issue resolution. The result? System reliability improved from 99.5% to 99.99%, incident resolution time decreased by 60%, and developers spent 40% less time troubleshooting issues. This shift allowed the company to scale confidently while improving customer experience and SLA adherence.