Exploring Kubernetes with Minikube
Kubernetes Kickoff
Special Thanks: This article was made possible by support from Linux Professional Institute
If somehow you've missed out on ten years of cutting-edge technology, permit me to fill in the gaps: containers are king and orchestrators are required to ensure that containers behave properly.
Over the past few years, Docker has served as a reliable container runtime with improved networking and a number of other important features. More recently, the Kubernetes [1] orchestration environment has emerged from the camp of Google. Since then, the popularity of Kubernetes has expanded exponentially.
The meteoric rise of Kubernetes follows the explosion of containers in all facets of IT. Kubernetes, which was created by Google, offers the ability to manage otherwise-unmanageable, multiple containers on multiple hosts for resilience and scalability while retaining the portability and speed for software releases within containers.
Kubernetes offers rolling updates to minimize disruption when a new feature is released, and the Kubernetes environment provides the ability to scale, load balance, and provide redundancy to applications should a container (or a collection of containers, known as a pod ) go offline.
For many users, however, Kubernetes remains a black art due to a relatively steep learning curve. Commercial products, such as Red Hat's OpenShift, have attempted to improve access to Kubernetes, but versatile tools such as OpenShift can be as nuanced and complicated as working with Kubernetes directly.
One easy and accessible way to start experimenting with Kubernetes is to use Minikube [2]. Minikube is a tool that is designed to let the user work with Kubernetes locally through a virtual environment. The official Kubernetes site states: ``Minikube runs a single-node Kubernetes cluster inside a VM on your laptop for users looking to
...
Buy ADMIN Magazine
US / Canada
UK / Australia
Related content
-
Monitoring container clusters with Prometheus
In native cloud environments, classic monitoring tools reach their limits when monitoring transient objects such as containers. Prometheus closes this gap, which Kubernetes complements, thanks to its conceptual similarity, simple structure, and far-reaching automation. -
Run Kubernetes in a container with Kind
Create a full-blown Kubernetes cluster in a Docker container with just one command. -
Zero-Ops Kubernetes with MicroK8s
A zero-ops installation of Kubernetes with MicroK8s operates on almost no compute capacity and roughly 700MB of RAM. -
Test your containers with the Docker Desktop one-node cluster
The built-in single-node Kubernetes cluster included with Docker Desktop is a handy tool for testing your container. -
Production-ready mini-Kubernetes installations
Kubernetes can be highly complex, with massive setup routines that are totally over the top for newcomers. If you want to try out Kubernetes or run it in production, you have a number of options, even if you decide not to use the comprehensive packages from established vendors.