Kubernetes and Infrastructure

Managed Kubernetes with Istio service mesh is the current-lean runtime pattern (DR-009, open — ENG-01 §4, ENG01-21), reflecting the parent PE company's shared platform stack — leaning this way specifically for the operational tooling/runbook/support transfer it would give a small team if confirmed, not because DragonPay's current scale demands Kubernetes on its own. Azure AKS specifically is contingent on the still-open Cloud decision and may need relabeling, not re-deciding, once that resolves (ENG-01 §4). The current-lean IaC tool (Terraform — open, ENG-01 §4/Decision Register ENG02-25) provisions all of it (ENG-01 §7, ENG01-08); manual production infrastructure changes are exceptional and controlled, not the normal path. Every other "Azure"/"Terraform"/"AKS" mention below is the same illustrative naming, not a separate decision.

Cluster Architecture

ENG01-21's deliverable (cluster topology, namespace conventions, resource/quota baselines), provisioned through the current-lean IaC tool (Terraform — open, ENG-01 §4/Decision Register ENG02-25). Not yet built.

Networking

Governed by ENG01-21 and STD01-03 (production/non-production as fully separate infrastructure boundaries at the networking layer). Not yet built.

Deployment Patterns

Governed by ENG01-22 (secrets via the current-lean HashiCorp Vault, DR-011, open — injected at pod startup rather than fetched by application code) and ENG01-10 (CI/CD-driven promotion). Not yet built.

Resource Management

Not yet defined. ENG01-15 calls for Azure budget/alert thresholds on Terraform-provisioned resources for cost visibility, but per-workload resource requests/limits and quota conventions for the AKS cluster itself haven't been established yet — that's part of ENG01-21's still- open scope.

Scaling

Not yet defined. STD01-13 sets the general principle that DragonPay doesn't target one global TPS/latency/availability number — SLOs are defined per customer-facing API and per external execution pattern, sized from actual expected CU/product volume, not assumed ahead of it. No concrete AKS autoscaling configuration exists yet.