What is Kubernetes?

Containers are in fashion. As a 2020 survey by the Cloud Native Computing Foundation found, more than 84% of respondents were already using containers in 2019. This number alone shows how widespread containers are.

But why have containers become so crucial to enterprise business? One of the most important factors is that containers help make companies more agile. With containers, your developers can quickly deploy and scale an application to meet virtually any size demand. And with the right tools, deployment and management can even be automated. In fact, without containers, a CI/CD (Continuous Integration/Continuous Delivery) pipeline would not be possible.

In today's modern business world, you need this level of agility and flexibility.

To deploy your containers, you can go the simple route and use Docker Engine. With this platform, you can even deploy a simple to manage cluster called Docker Swarm and it will work great. Docker makes deploying containers incredibly easy.

However, with this simplicity, you lose the ability to orchestrate your deployments in a way that benefits larger companies. For this, you need a tool like Kubernetes.

What is Kubernetes?

Simply put, Kubernetes is an open-source enterprise container orchestration platform for deploying, automating, scaling, and managing applications and services.

Originally designed by Google, Kubernetes is now maintained by the Cloud Native Computing Foundation and has become essential for large-scale container deployment.

Kubernetes clusters can be deployed with on-premises server hardware or cloud-hosted virtual machines and are made up of components such as:

• Ensemble – a group of nodes that work together.
• Containers – an independent application that can be deployed on a cluster.
• Pods – the smallest deployable computing units that can be created and managed.
• Kube-apiserver – exposes the Kubernetes API.
• etc. – highly available key-value storage.
• Kube r Schedule – watches for newly created pods and selects a node for them to run on.
• Kube Control Manager – The controller that resides on the master and controls all connected nodes in the cluster.
• Node Controller – Responds when nodes go down.
• Replication controller – responsible for maintaining the correct number of pods.

This is the parts list of a Kubernetes cluster, which shows that Kubernetes is complicated. And that's without considering that such a list only scratches the surface. In fact, Kubernetes is not for the faint of heart. Of course, deploying a Kubernetes cluster can be done in just a few minutes. The real challenge comes when it comes time to deploy containers and pods effectively.

To deploy containers and pods, create a manifest that includes all the configurations required for deployment. These settings include several important fields that define things like compute, memory, and networking. To make things even more challenging, you can have a single manifest that contains configurations for multiple applications and services, each containing multiple configuration options.

The larger the deployment, the more complex the manifest. And when deploying these containers/pods to a cloud-hosted service, you need to make sure your manifest is configured correctly, otherwise you may end up spending more money than you realize.

Therefore, it is absolutely crucial that you have a team of developers and administrators who know Kubernetes very well. The goal of this technology is not only to help your business become more agile, but also to save you money and add a level of reliability and scalability that you may have never experienced before.

What your developers need to know

Firstly, your developers need to have a solid understanding of container technology. They need to really get the benefits of containers, how they work, and how they are used to improve your business's functionality and bottom line.

Developers who will work with Kubernetes must also understand how to use Linux, as this will likely be the operating system used for deploying Kubernetes clusters. They will also need a solid foundation that includes things like:

• YAML syntax and indentation
• Container runtime engines (like Podman, Docker, or containerd)
• How container images are pulled and developed
• Cgroups best practices
• Helm Charts
• Istio Service Mesh
• Security prioritization
• How to containerize an application
• Kubernetes Network Services (and how they interact)
• debug
• Role-Based Access Controls (RBAC)
• Automation technology

As we said, Kubernetes is not easy. In fact, if your developers and administrators approach Kubernetes without first understanding how it works (and all the pieces involved in deploying/managing a cluster), they could do more harm than good.

One problem is that some admins/developers approach Kubernetes the same way they would approach a monolithic application deployment. This is wrong on every conceivable level. Microservices require a very different approach, otherwise they will fail or become a security nightmare.

Another problem is that some companies will simply put an administrator to work and assume that only he or she is capable of deploying and managing a Kubernetes cluster. They can not. To work successfully with Kubernetes, you need a team of developers, operations managers, and administrators, each of whom must come into the project properly trained and ready to get to work.

Conclusion

If you really want to expand your business to meet the current state of demand, containers will likely be in your immediate future. To really make the most of these container deployments, you need a powerful orchestration tool. There is no better option for this than Kubernetes.