MCP Server Kubernetes Deployment — Surviving the 52% Death Rate

Last month I was connecting a few external MCP servers and noticed something odd. READMEs had "stable" tags, GitHub star counts in the hundreds — yet hitting /mcp just dropped the connection. I figured it was my config at first. Then another server, then another. Same result. Turns out it wasn't just me. An April 2026 scan of 2,181 remote MCP endpoints found 52% completely dead, with only 9% fully healthy . The rest responded but weren't actually usable. I went through why MCP servers die so oft