END USER PERSPECTIVES ON RUNNING
STATEFUL APPLICATIONS ON KUBERNETES
September 2021

Kubernetes is continuing to play a huge role in this era of digital transformation that accelerated when thepandemic began. Increasingly mission critical applications such as databases are managed using Kubernetes
in order to increase business agility and application resilience. The business results of doing so are impressive.
Apps are delivered faster, scale easier, enjoy greater security and, often, do so at reduced cost. But thetransition to new application management patterns is not easy. Enterprises face challenges meeting business
requirements like data protection, mobility and security, with common solutions such as vendor support
proving costly when many different data services are involved. For greater adoption of Kubernetes to continue,
enterprises will need to solve the challenges around data protection, mobility, capacity management andsupport that come with enterprise applications.
This survey was conducted among 500 IT professionals in the U.S. and the U.K. who are knowledgeable oftheir company’s Kubernetes usage, to assess how adoption of running stateful applications on Kubernetes has
shifted, the benefits and efficiencies it has on their companies’ bottom lines, and what the future may hold.

KEY FINDINGS:• An overwhelming majority (99%, n=500) of respondents agree that running stateful applications on
Kubernetes have impacts to their company’s bottom line, for the following reasons:• Over half (55%) agree it allows them to scale their applications faster and allows their developers to be
more efficient• Over half (54%) agree it allows them to develop applications more quickly• Half (50%) agree it allows them to increase security by leveraging automation• 36% agree it reduces IT budget• More than half (55%, n=500) of respondents run stateful applications on Kubernetes instead of using amanaged database-as-a service offering from the public cloud because they need more control over theirdata services.
• Additional reasoning (n=500) includes needing more customization options (47%), needing to run dataservices on-prem (44%), data service is not available as a managed service (42%) and the cost of a cloud
database-as-a-service is too high (41%)• When asked what stateful applications respondents currently run on Kubernetes (n=500), 41% indicated
MySQL, followed closely by GitLab and PostgreSQL (31%), RabbitMQ (28%), MongoDB (27%) and Jenkins,TensorFlow and Cassandra (26%), among others.

• More than half (55%, n=500) of respondents noted Backup& Restore is a key requirement for stateful applications
running on Kubernetes, followed by Data Mobility andCapacity Management (49%), High Availability (48%), MultiCloud/Multi-Region Support (45%), Encryption and Disaster
Recovery (43%) and Role-Based Access Controls (38%).
• Among these requirements (n=499), 29% cited DataMobility as the requirement they most struggle toachieve, followed closely by High Availability and Capacity
Management (28%), Backup & Restore and Multi-Cloud/Multi-Region Support (26%), Disaster Recovery (25%) andRole-Based Access Controls and Encryption (22%).

55%
of respondents noted Backup &Restore is a key requirement for stateful
applications running on Kubernetes• Almost half (46%, n=500) of respondents cite Data Protection as the biggest operational challenge whenmanaging stateful services, followed by Managing Backups (41%), Service Discover & Ingress to Database
Shards and Managing Storage (38%), Version Upgrades (36%), Operational Knowledge of Each SpecificData Service (35%) and Deployments (30%).
• When asked what methods of support respondents use for data services running on Kubernetes (n=500),
72% indicated Support from the Vendor Most Closely Aligned with the Data Service, followed by Relying
on our Internal Expertise (62%) and Crowd Sourcing from the Open-Source Community (52%).
• Among those who indicated Support from the Vendor Most Closely Aligned with the Data Service,when asked what challenges they have getting support for data services running on Kubernetes fromdata services vendors:

69%

61%

55%

agree that managing a
support contract with different
vendors for different dataservices is expensive

agree that there is addedcomplexity to their teamdue to different vendor
approaches to Day 2 Ops

agree that the cost of
supporting many databaseinstances is too high

• Over half cite Increasing Agility (58%, n=500) and Increasing Resiliency (52%, n=500) as the biggest
drivers behind their team’s decision to build and deploy stateful applications on Kubernetes, followed bytheir App Team’s Desire to Run Stateful Apps on Kubernetes (48%), Reducing Maintenance Burden (45%)
and Reducing Costs (43%).
• On average, over half (53%, n=500) of respondents’ workloads running on Kubernetes are stateful.

• On average, the typical DevOps or IT Ops
engineer saves 17 hours a week (n=500)
due to operational efficiencies from runningstateful applications on Kubernetes.

• A majority (87%) of respondents expect thepercentage of stateful workloads over the next 12months to increase. Only 9% expect it to stay thesame, followed by 4% who expect it to decrease.

17hrs a week
saved by the typical DevOps or IT Ops
engineer due to operational efficiencies

87%of respondents expect thepercentage of stateful workloads
over the next 12 months to increase.

METHODOLOGYThe Pure Storage Survey was conducted by Wakefield Research (www.wakefieldresearch.com) among 500 IT
Professionals, employed full-time in the US (250) or UK (250) at companies of 500+ employees, who self-identify as
possessing significant knowledge of their company’s Kubernetes usage and currently running stateful applications onKubernetes. The survey ran between September 9th and September 17th, 2021, using an email invitation and an onlinesurvey. Quota were set for 250 respondents in the US and in the UK. Results of any sample are subject to sampling
variation. The magnitude of the variation is measurable and is affected by the number of interviews and the level of thepercentages expressing the results. For the interviews conducted in this particular study, the chances are 95 in 100 that asurvey result does not vary, plus or minus, by more than 4.4 percentage points from the result that would be obtained ifinterviews had been conducted with all persons in the universe represented by the sample.