Running Laravel on Kubernetes: From Basics to Production

When Kubernetes Makes Sense

Kubernetes adds complexity but provides powerful orchestration for scaling, self-healing, and deployment management. Use it when you need these capabilities at scale.

Deployment Manifest

apiVersion: apps/v1
kind: Deployment
metadata:
  name: laravel-app
spec:
  replicas: 3
  selector:
    matchLabels:
      app: laravel
  template:
    metadata:
      labels:
        app: laravel
    spec:
      containers:
        - name: app
          image: myregistry/laravel-app:latest
          ports:
            - containerPort: 80
          env:
            - name: APP_KEY
              valueFrom:
                secretKeyRef:
                  name: laravel-secrets
                  key: app-key
          resources:
            requests:
              memory: "256Mi"
              cpu: "250m"
            limits:
              memory: "512Mi"
              cpu: "500m"
          livenessProbe:
            httpGet:
              path: /health
              port: 80
            initialDelaySeconds: 10
            periodSeconds: 10
          readinessProbe:
            httpGet:
              path: /ready
              port: 80
            initialDelaySeconds: 5
            periodSeconds: 5

Service

apiVersion: v1
kind: Service
metadata:
  name: laravel-service
spec:
  selector:
    app: laravel
  ports:
    - port: 80
      targetPort: 80
  type: ClusterIP

Ingress

apiVersion: networking.k8s.io/v1
kind: Ingress
metadata:
  name: laravel-ingress
  annotations:
    kubernetes.io/ingress.class: nginx
    cert-manager.io/cluster-issuer: letsencrypt-prod
spec:
  tls:
    - hosts:
        - app.example.com
      secretName: laravel-tls
  rules:
    - host: app.example.com
      http:
        paths:
          - path: /
            pathType: Prefix
            backend:
              service:
                name: laravel-service
                port:
                  number: 80

Queue Workers

apiVersion: apps/v1
kind: Deployment
metadata:
  name: laravel-queue
spec:
  replicas: 2
  template:
    spec:
      containers:
        - name: queue
          image: myregistry/laravel-app:latest
          command: ["php", "artisan", "queue:work", "--tries=3"]
          resources:
            requests:
              memory: "128Mi"
              cpu: "100m"

Horizontal Pod Autoscaler

apiVersion: autoscaling/v2
kind: HorizontalPodAutoscaler
metadata:
  name: laravel-hpa
spec:
  scaleTargetRef:
    apiVersion: apps/v1
    kind: Deployment
    name: laravel-app
  minReplicas: 3
  maxReplicas: 10
  metrics:
    - type: Resource
      resource:
        name: cpu
        target:
          type: Utilization
          averageUtilization: 70

Conclusion

Kubernetes provides powerful orchestration for Laravel at scale. Start with basic deployments, add health checks and autoscaling, and build expertise incrementally.