Shopwave migrates by preserving contracts and redesigning edges
Synthesis orientation is easiest to understand by separating the Kubernetes contract from the Google Cloud implementation. Migration succeeds when teams distinguish workload contracts from provider edges. Shopwave keeps its Kubernetes objects but redesigns the surrounding platform. The Kubernetes objects stay familiar, but GKE supplies controllers, infrastructure and safe defaults around them. This is why a team can move from an on-premises cluster without rewriting every workload, while still needing to redesign networking, identity and operational ownership for the cloud environment.
A useful inspection step is `kubectl diff -f platform/`. Read the output as evidence, not as a ritual: first confirm the desired object exists, then look at status conditions, events and the Google Cloud resource it represents. In production, capture the expected result in a runbook or automated check so an operator can distinguish slow reconciliation from a configuration error.
Production gotcha: A lift-and-shift that copies on-premises add-ons into GKE can duplicate managed capabilities and create unsupported ownership. The safe habit is to verify quotas, regional availability and feature support against current Google Cloud documentation before rollout. The worked decision record follows.
