The article discusses how Airbnb achieved high availability for its distributed database systems using Kubernetes. It highlights the technical challenges faced and the solutions implemented to ensure robust performance and reliability in managing data across multiple services. The focus is on the architectural improvements and operational strategies that support scalable database management.

Airbnb has successfully implemented seamless upgrades of Istio across tens of thousands of pods and numerous Kubernetes clusters by utilizing a canary upgrade model and a custom mutation framework named Krispr. This approach allows independent workload upgrades with zero downtime, gradual rollouts, and the ability to revert changes without requiring coordination among diverse teams. The article details the architecture and processes that enable these upgrades for both Kubernetes and virtual machine environments.