The process of developing and scaling enterprise software solutions across the globe to serve netizens has evolved greatly over the last few decades. The dependence on hardware has rapidly reduced in favor of software optimizations that allow software engineers and development teams to scale up the utility they can derive from hardware installation by as much as is needed to get the job done.

Kubernetes is one such solution that has allowed us to significantly scale software solutions. However, to leverage its benefits, adequate knowledge of Kubernetes configuration is required to ensure that things don’t break in production. YAML is arguably the neatest tool that can be leveraged for providing configuration instructions when running and deploying applications using Kubernetes.

Despite the proven utility of YAML as a data serialization language and its ergonomics, there are unavoidable errors that occur using YAML in Kubernetes configuration. Learning how to avoid or manage these errors will greatly impact your development journey and the stability of your software solution using containerization. In this article, you’ll learn a number of tips for managing YAML errors for Kubernetes configuration.

5 Tips for Managing YAML Errors for Kubernetes Configuration

1. Keep Your YAML Structure Simple

The entire point of YAML is its simplicity, which is aimed at reducing convoluted code that isn’t manageable. Sometimes, this may mean using more common patterns like:

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Rather than patterns like:

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The latter can become harder to read if your list has nested objects or lists within them. All of these lean into the KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid) ideology that is prevalent in the field of software development.

1. Employ Consistent Conventions

   This is arguably more important than the first tip. A code’s quality is made apparent when multiple professionals work on the codebase, but it looks like one person did it all. It is important to agree on a consistent writing style for your YAML configuration because as the size of your configuration grows, it may become much harder to spot errors in a configuration with multiple writing conventions.

2. Leverage Linters and YAML Formatters

   Having linters can be incredibly helpful for proofreading your code on the go. Also, online YAML formatters can be equally helpful for providing insights on how to correct hard-to-spot errors that may be messing with your Kubernetes configurations. At other times, copying and pasting your YAML code in a new environment helps bring about a new perspective that will be instrumental in finding bugs. Finally, tools like Datree can save a lot of debugging time.

3. Leverage Multiple YAML Files

   Trying to fit all of your configurations in one YAML file is a recipe for disaster because regardless of how easy YAML is on the eyes, debugging errors will be a lot tougher. Therefore, it is important to make use of multiple YAML files where possible to further decouple your Kubernetes configuration. As a rule of thumb, when trying to debug your YAML errors, it can be incredibly helpful to copy bits of the code into separate files and review them in bits rather than taking on the whole chunk of the YAML configuration in one file.

4. Seek Help from Peers

   There are times when your YAML script’s bug is a result of a much deeper problem. In such instances, it can be very helpful to escalate your error messages to more experienced developers who will save you time that would have been wasted running in circles. Bear in mind, however, that you need to mask or remove sensitive data when sharing your code with the public to avoid compromising your digital infrastructure. Platforms like StackOverflow have a rich community of developers who have either been through what you’re going through or are able to debug your code better than you can.

Conclusion

Managing YAML errors during Kubernetes configuration can seem like looking for a needle in a haystack due to how many of the mistakes result directly from human error. More often than not, these errors can be hard to spot because, upon revision of the code, you’re more likely to see what you wanted to write rather than what you actually wrote. This challenge is further compounded by overly verbose YAML configuration files.

In this article, we discussed useful tips to ensure your YAML configuration files leverage the best aspect of YAML, which is its cleanliness. This will enable better configuration. You also learned a number of tips that drive home the need for keeping your configuration files small and decoupled to aid easy debugging and reduce the chances of something going wrong. The time lost in following best practices is ultimately recovered over time in the form of achieving an easily manageable digital infrastructure with minimal technical debt.

I hope you found this post enjoyable and easy to follow. If you have any queries or feedback, please feel free to leave a comment. Good luck!