In this deep-dive virtual session, Paras Thakur will explore the principles, benefits, and practical patterns behind application scaling on Google Cloud using Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE). As organizations evolve and their user bases grow, infrastructure must scale not just in volume but intelligently, reliably, and cost-efficiently. This session helps you understand how GKE is uniquely positioned to support modern, dynamic workloads.

What you'll learn:

1. Why Kubernetes—and Why GKE?

   • Key differentiators that make GKE more than just “Kubernetes in the cloud.”

   • Google Cloud–native integrations (e.g. with IAM, networking, load balancing, autoscaling).

   • Comparison with other container orchestration or PaaS approaches.

2. Core Scaling Principles & Patterns

   • Horizontal Pod Autoscaling, Cluster Autoscaling, and node pool strategies

   • Managing stateless vs stateful services under scale

   • Designing for resilience: canary deployments, blue-green, rolling updates

3. Best Practices and Pitfalls

   • Optimizing resource requests/limits to avoid overprovisioning

   • Handling “noisy neighbor” issues, burst traffic, or unpredictable load spikes

   • Observability and monitoring: metrics, logs, alerts to guide scaling decisions

4. Real-World Use Cases & Lessons Learned

   • Examples from production systems (challenges, optimizations, trade-offs)

   • Migrating legacy workloads into Kubernetes and scaling them

   • Cost-efficiency strategies when scaling in the cloud

5. Interactive Q&A / Discussion

   • Attendees can bring forward their challenges

   • Live troubleshooting of scaling design scenarios