Managed Kubernetes
with a human touch.
We design, build, and run production-grade Kubernetes clusters anywhere. We handle the operations. You ship the product.
- ✓ Kubernetes Certified Service Provider
- ✓ Intermax IKS · AKS · EKS · GKE
- ✓ Batteries included: Gateway API, GitOps, Observability, Security
What's included
Batteries included from day one
Every cluster comes with a full open-source platform stack, configured, hardened, and integrated. No stitching things together yourself after launch.
Observability Stack
Metrics, dashboards, and alerting, pre-configured for cluster and workload health.
Continuous Delivery
GitOps-based continuous delivery so your deployments are auditable and repeatable.
Certificate Management
Automated TLS certificate provisioning and renewal from Let's Encrypt or your own CA.
Backup
Cluster and (optional) persistent volume backups.
Network Policies
Default-deny network segmentation, workloads only communicate when explicitly allowed.
Gateway API
Production-grade traffic management for HTTP, GRPC and TCP.
Pod Security Standards
Enforced cluster policies that block privilege escalation, host access, and unsafe capabilities at admission.
RBAC & SSO
Role-based access control with optional SSO integration (OIDC) for your team.
Multi-tenancy
Strict isolation between teams or workloads using namespace segmentation, network policies, and RBAC.
How it works
From kickoff to production in weeks, not months
Step 01
Design
We start with a short discovery session to understand your workloads, compliance requirements, and team setup. Then we design a cluster architecture and security baseline tailored to your context.
Step 02
Build
We provision the cluster, configure the full stack, help you set up CI/CD pipelines, and onboard your team with a runbook. You get a working platform, not a vanilla Kubernetes cluster.
Step 03
Operate
Once live, we handle everything: upgrades, monitoring, incident response, capacity planning, and security patches. You have a direct line to a team of engineers who knows your cluster.
Day-2 operations
Running a cluster is easy.
Keeping it healthy isn't.
Most teams can spin up Kubernetes. The hard part starts after launch; upgrades without downtime, handling incidents, staying ahead of CVEs, right-sizing nodes as load changes.
"Guida speaks the same language as our developers."
- Zero-downtime cluster upgrades
- TLS certificate renewals
- Capacity planning & autoscaling tuning
- 24/7 incident response & root-cause analysis
- Backup testing & restore
- CVE triage and remediation
Run anywhere: your cloud, sovereign, or on-premises
Trusted by teams in healthcare, fintech, logistics and government.
From public sector organizations to fast-growing software companies.
FAQ
Managed Kubernetes, answered
Managed Kubernetes basics
What is managed Kubernetes?
Managed Kubernetes means a specialist team runs your Kubernetes clusters in production for you: design, provisioning, upgrades, monitoring, security patching and 24/7 incident response. Guida provides this from the Netherlands as a Kubernetes Certified Service Provider (KCSP). Your developers ship applications; Guida keeps the platform underneath healthy.
How is Guida different from AKS, EKS or GKE on their own?
AKS, EKS and GKE manage the Kubernetes control plane. Everything else is still yours: node upgrades, ingress, certificates, monitoring, backups, security policies and the 3am P1 incident when something breaks. Guida takes over that part. On Intermax IKS and on-premises, Guida manages the control plane as well. Read what AKS, EKS and GKE don’t manage for you.
When should you not use (managed) Kubernetes?
If you run one or two stateless services, a PaaS such as Azure Container Apps or Google Cloud Run is often simpler and cheaper. Kubernetes pays off with many services, multiple teams, portability or strict compliance requirements. Guida will tell you if Kubernetes is not the right fit. Read when not to use Kubernetes.
What is included in every Guida cluster?
A pre-configured open-source platform stack: Gateway API, Observability, GitOps, Certificate Management, Backups, default-deny network policies, Pod Security Standards, RBAC, Multi-tenancy. See what’s included.
Which clouds and platforms does Guida support?
Guida is cloud agnostic: Intermax IKS (Dutch sovereign cloud), Azure AKS, AWS EKS, Google Cloud GKE and on-premises on VMware, Nutanix or OpenStack. The platform stack is the same everywhere, so adding or switching a cloud does not mean retooling your team.
Working with Guida
What is a Kubernetes Certified Service Provider (KCSP)?
KCSP is a certification by the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF), the organization behind Kubernetes, for companies with proven experience supporting organizations running Kubernetes in production. Guida has been a KCSP since 2020 and is one of the few KCSPs in the Netherlands focused on managed Kubernetes. Read more.
Who are the engineers running our clusters?
A team of certified Kubernetes engineers in the Netherlands, including Kubestronauts: engineers who hold all five CNCF Kubernetes certifications (KCNA, KCSA, CKA, CKAD and CKS). We contribute to open-source projects and are actively involved in the CNCF community. The Guida engineers who build your cluster are the ones who operate it.
Is managed Kubernetes cheaper than an in-house platform team?
For most organizations, yes. A 24/7 on-call rotation that doesn’t burn people out needs at least four to five engineers with deep Kubernetes knowledge, plus their time for upgrades, CVEs and tooling. With Guida you get that team and the platform for a fixed monthly fee, and your own engineers stay on your product. Read what an in-house platform team really costs.
How is Guida's managed Kubernetes priced?
A fixed monthly fee, based on the number of clusters and environments. No hourly billing for operations, upgrades or incidents.
What support do we get, and how do we reach you?
Production clusters come with a 24/7 SLA and incident response. Day to day, your developers talk to Guida engineers directly in a shared Slack or Microsoft Teams channel. A quick question gets a quick answer, not a ticket number.
How long does it take to get a production cluster?
Typically weeks. The main variables are access to your cloud accounts, network integration and your internal security approvals.
Can Guida take over our existing Kubernetes cluster?
Yes. We start with a Kubernetes Review of security, architecture and Day-2 readiness, then either bring your cluster up to Guida’s baseline or migrate your workloads to a new one.
Are we locked in?
No. The platform is built entirely on open-source tooling, and on AKS, EKS and GKE the cluster runs in your own cloud account or subscription. If you want to run it yourself or move to another provider, we work out an exit strategy and transition plan with you. You keep a standard Kubernetes cluster your team can operate.
Who already uses Guida?
Guida runs 100+ Kubernetes clusters for development teams in healthcare, fintech, logistics and the public sector. Read the case studies.
Development and operations
What access do developers get?
Developers get kubectl access scoped by RBAC, plus access to the GitOps tooling (FluxCD) and the observability stack (Prometheus and Grafana). You can deploy your own Kubernetes manifests or Helm charts; Guida runs the cluster-wide platform components underneath.
How do deployments work?
Through GitOps with FluxCD. Your CI (GitLab CI, GitHub Actions, Azure DevOps) builds images, your desired state lives in Git, and Flux applies it to the cluster. Every change is reviewed, auditable and reversible with a git revert. Prefer push-based deployments from your existing pipeline? That works too.
Can we monitor our own applications?
Yes, both metrics and logs. The Prometheus and Grafana stack Guida uses for the platform scrapes your workloads too: add a ServiceMonitor and your metrics, dashboards and alerts sit next to the cluster’s. Application logs are collected centrally in Loki and searchable in the same Grafana.
Can multiple teams share one cluster safely?
Yes. Guida isolates teams by namespace, with RBAC, default-deny network policies and resource quotas, so each team only sees and reaches its own workloads. See Kubernetes multi-tenancy patterns.
How does Guida handle Kubernetes upgrades?
Guida upgrades the whole platform, not only Kubernetes itself. We keep clusters on supported Kubernetes versions and keep the cluster add-ons and tooling up to date. Before every upgrade we check for deprecated APIs and confirm each add-on supports the target version. Upgrades go to non-production first. Production nodes are then replaced gradually, respecting PodDisruptionBudgets, so workloads that run multiple replicas stay available. Upgrades are announced in advance and happen within agreed maintenance windows.
How do we keep our applications available during upgrades and node failures?
Run at least two replicas, set readiness probes, add a PodDisruptionBudget and spread replicas across availability zones. Guida reviews these settings with your team during onboarding. See high availability in Kubernetes.
Can we run AI and GPU workloads?
Yes. Guida runs GPU nodes in Kubernetes for training and inference, in public clouds and on private infrastructure.
Can you help reduce our cloud costs?
Yes. Right-sizing is part of our Day-2 operations: we tune resource requests and limits, node sizes and autoscaling based on actual usage, so you stop paying for capacity you don’t use. See FinOps in a Kubernetes world.
Do you manage databases and other stateful workloads?
Our advice is to use a managed database service, such as Azure Database, Amazon RDS, Cloud SQL or the managed PostgreSQL, MySQL and MSSQL on Intermax IKS, unless there is a reason not to: no managed service is available, sovereignty requirements, or cost at scale. In those cases you can run databases in the cluster with a Kubernetes operator such as CloudNativePG. Guida installs and maintains the operator; your team manages the databases themselves, including their configuration, backups and data.
Security, compliance and sovereignty
Is Guida's managed Kubernetes suitable for regulated industries?
Yes. Guida is KCSP and ISO 27001:2022 certified and runs clusters for Dutch government, healthcare and fintech. We also help you demonstrate compliance: every change to your cluster and applications is recorded in Git, access is role-based and logged, and you choose where your data lives. Intermax IKS is compliant with Haven, the Dutch government standard for Kubernetes. See our certifications.
Can we run Kubernetes on a sovereign cloud in the Netherlands or the EU?
Yes. On Intermax IKS, clusters run on Intermax infrastructure in three redundant Dutch datacenters, and all application data is processed and stored under Dutch law. Guida also deploys and manages Kubernetes on private clouds (VMware, Nutanix, OpenStack) and on European cloud providers. With these options, your data and the infrastructure stay in the Netherlands or the EU, under European jurisdiction. Operational control stays here too: your clusters are run by Guida engineers in the Netherlands.
What is Haven?
Haven is the Dutch government standard for Kubernetes, maintained by VNG. A Haven-compliant cluster can run any Haven application, so government organizations are not tied to one supplier. Guida’s Intermax IKS environment is Haven-compliant.
How does Guida secure clusters?
Every cluster has default-deny network policies, enforced Pod Security Standards, RBAC and automated TLS. Guida triages and remediates CVEs in the platform stack as part of the service. See why Kubernetes is not secure by default.
How are backups and disaster recovery handled?
We back up cluster state and, optionally, persistent volumes. Guida tests restores regularly.
Let's talk
Let's see how we can help
with managing Kubernetes.
Book a call with one of our engineers. Tell us about your setup, we'll tell you honestly if and how we can help.