The Next Evolution of DigitalOcean Kubernetes: Introducing Features that Unlock Superior Scalability for Growing Businesses

The Next Evolution of DigitalOcean Kubernetes: Introducing Features that Unlock Superior Scalability for Growing Businesses The Next Evolution of DigitalOcean Kubernetes: Introducing Features that Unlock Superior Scalability for Growing Businesses An overview of each new feature, and what it means for your business Increased cluster capacity Optimized networking with VPC-native Kubernetes Improved performance with eBPF-powered networking Managed Cilium for high-performance networking What this means for your business Get started today About the author Try DigitalOcean for free Related Articles Stop Building SaaS from Scratch: Meet the SeaNotes Starter Kit Announcing OpenAI gpt-oss Models on the DigitalOcean Gradient™ AI Platform Introducing langchain-gradient: Seamless LangChain Integration with DigitalOcean Gradient™ AI Platform By Nicole Ghalwash Published: March 31, 2025 4 min read Kubernetes is the foundation of many modern applications, providing the scalability and resilience needed for today’s dynamic workloads. However, as applications grow, so do their infrastructure and scaling requirements. Managing multiple clusters to handle large-scale workloads introduces operational complexity, increased network management, and challenges for the DevOps teams. These challenges can include greater resource fragmentation, increased latency due to inter-cluster communication, and the manual burden of maintaining security and compliance across multiple clusters. These challenges are particularly pronounced for data-intensive workloads like video streaming, large-scale data analytics, and security operations. That’s why we’re excited to announce a major evolution of DigitalOcean Kubernetes Service (DOKS), which consists of four features: Increased cluster capacity to 1,000 worker nodes per cluster Increased cluster capacity to 1,000 worker nodes per cluster Optimized networking with VPC-native Kubernetes Optimized networking with VPC-native Kubernetes Improved performance with eBPF-powered networking Improved performance with eBPF-powered networking Managed Cilium for high-performance networking Managed Cilium for high-performance networking These updates help to empower businesses to run larger workloads within a single DOKS cluster, reducing the need for complex multi-cluster management and unlocking new levels of performance, reliability, and simplicity. NoBid, a Kubernetes customer who joined us at Deploy 2025, has seen significant improvements in scalability and security when deploying DOKS. “DigitalOcean Kubernetes provides NoBid with a powerful platform for our containerized workloads," said Shawn Petersen, CIO at NoBid. “Additionally, the ability to rapidly scale based on business demand, handle 1.3 PB/month in data egress, along with better security controls were all key differentiators for us to partner with DigitalOcean. " If you want to learn more about NoBid’s use case, check out their case study. Also, you can learn more about their migration from AWS to DigitalOcean and their subsequent 30% cost-savings by watching the testimonial they gave at Deploy 2025. This announcement consists of four features that are new and coming to DOKS.