Lead Image © Goran Bogicevic, Fotolia.com
Production-ready mini-Kubernetes installations
Rich Harvest
No matter what your technical problems, containers make everything easier, better, and faster – at least that's the rosy promise of the glossy brochures. However, some distributors of container platforms that include Kubernetes provide an excellent tool that, once it has been rolled out, keeps on adding components that can quickly overwhelm newcomers with its complexity to cover various missing aspects of container operation.
Each of these components, whether addressed by the tool itself or as an add-on, comes with its own system requirements and drags in other components that also need to be rolled out before anything else happens. The many solutions in a provider's portfolio did not come about by chance but are part of a carefully developed product strategy. The idea is to cover every eventuality, discourage admins from shopping around, and ensure maximum returns.
By the time you have implemented a production-ready Kubernetes (K8s) in this way, you will have paid a large amount of cash to the distributor and your choice of hardware vendor, fought your way through countless pages of documentation, and probably worked for weeks to knock all the add-ons and the tool itself into a production-ready state. It's easy to understand why many admins lose interest in containerization before they have even gotten started.
In this article, I focus on Kubernetes per se and the means for achieving the smallest possible K8s setup that is as complete as possible for a production or development environment.
Basics
Any container platform certainly needs scalable, redundant storage; versatile software-defined networking; and comprehensive security features. The obvious question is: How do you set up Kubernetes without breaking the bank? What options do you have for building an executable Kubernetes that is suitable for production use outside the sphere of influence of the major
...
Buy this article as PDF
(incl. VAT)
Buy ADMIN Magazine
US / Canada
UK / Australia
Related content
-
Rancher manages lean Kubernetes workloads
The Rancher lightweight alternative to Red Hat's OpenShift gives admins a helping hand when entering the world of Kubernetes, but with major differences in architecture. -
Rancher Kubernetes management platform
Rancher has set up shop as an agile alternative to Red Hat OpenShift as an efficient way to manage Kubernetes clusters. In terms of the architecture, a Rancher setup differs significantly from classic Kubernetes. -
Optimally combine Kubernetes and Ceph with Rook
Ceph distributed storage and Kubernetes container orchestration come together with Rook. -
Cloud-native storage for Kubernetes with Rook
Kubernetes is known to be inflexible when it comes to persistent storage, but Rook now offers cloud-native storage and seeks to achieve harmony. -
Nested Kubernetes with Loft
Kubernetes has limited support for multitenancy, so many admins prefer to build multiple standalone Kubernetes clusters that eat up resources and complicate management. As a solution, Loft launches any number of clusters within the same control plane.