As someone who doesn't know enough about K8s, this looks like an amazingly easy way to get stuck in.

Can anyone who has experience with real deployments advise on what pain-points may be encountered by growing something like this further than N nodes (and talk about what N might be?)

If you want to get started with Kubernetes I'd recommend either, Kelsey Hightower's Kubernetes the hard way (https://github.com/kelseyhightower/kubernetes-the-hard-way) which is a good way to start getting an understanding of the various components and how they fit together or, if you want to try out running workloads on a cluster, Kubeadm (https://kubernetes.io/docs/setup/independent/create-cluster-...)

If you're interested in books on the topic, I like Kubernetes in Action (https://www.manning.com/books/kubernetes-in-action) or Kubernetes: Up and running (http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920043874.do)

One of the challenges with Kubernetes is that it's pretty fast moving, so it's a good idea to work with resources that are up to date. I know a last commit from May doesn't seem very old but that's going to a least be missing 1.7 and could be missing 1.6 or earlier as well.