How to Migrate Docker Compose to Kubernetes

Moving from Docker Compose to Kubernetes gives you better scaling, self-healing, and production-grade orchestration. This guide walks through converting a Compose setup to Kubernetes manifests.

Understand the Mapping

• services become Deployments and Services
• volumes become PersistentVolumeClaims
• environment variables become ConfigMaps or Secrets
• ports become Service definitions with type ClusterIP, NodePort, or LoadBalancer

Use Kompose for Automated Conversion

curl -L https://github.com/kubernetes/kompose/releases/latest/download/kompose-linux-amd64 -o kompose
chmod +x kompose && sudo mv kompose /usr/local/bin/

cd /path/to/your/docker-compose
kompose convert

This generates Kubernetes YAML files for each service defined in your Compose file.

Review and Adjust

Kompose output is a starting point. You should adjust the generated manifests:

# Add resource limits
resources:
  requests:
    memory: "256Mi"
    cpu: "250m"
  limits:
    memory: "512Mi"
    cpu: "500m"

Deploy to Your Cluster

kubectl apply -f .
kubectl get pods
kubectl get svc

Key Differences to Handle

• Replace depends_on with readiness probes and init containers
• Convert bind mounts to PersistentVolumeClaims for stateful data
• Use Kubernetes Secrets for sensitive environment variables
• Add health checks (liveness and readiness probes) to all containers