Let’s start with a scenario, whenever any application builds, we generally do have 3 environments on the basis of resources – dev for developers resources, test for testers resources, and prod for production resources. Likewise, we used to have a separate IT-Operational Team having strategies to maintain their environment resources. It was very time-consuming and many human resources were required.
We are in the microservices era where we follow the DevOps Methodology. The DevOps Team brings all the environment and strategies to maintain resources in one go. Resources are the ones who decide the behavior of your applications. We can apply the criteria to resources, so how can our application behave? To do this we can give the name to our resources, we can give the resources quota to the application, and can give resource ranges to the application.
There are two basic ways to deploy to Kubernetes: Imperative acts as a command which is active and immediate, whereas declarative is passive, by writing manifest file and using kubectl apply.
Why Imperative?
The imperative command is the first mode of managing objects, to use CLI for CUD (Create, Update, Delete) objects on Kubernetes cluster without specifying on manifest file ahead of time. They are a blessing for Kubernetes application developers and administrators because they are very easy to remember and handy. According to K8s, it’s like a ‘Swiss Army Knife” of container orchestration and management.
Imperative commands can help in getting tasks done quickly, as well as generating definition file templates easily. It saves a considerable amount of time and prevents human errors.
Have you ever wondered that when you access the API Server through kubectl you are authenticated through the API controller, but how will you do the same from the pod side? Here the Service Account role comes into play. As k8s definition itself says “Processes in containers inside pods can also contact the apiserver. When they do, they are authenticated as a particular Service Account (for example, default).”
Things we should know about service Account,
Created in a namespace.
Used to allow processes inside pods, access to the API Server.
Default service account = default (no access to the API server).
Create your own service account.
Use it in a RoleBinding or ClusterRoleBinding.
Use the service account secret to obtain the authentication token & CA certificate.
What we will be covering today,
Creating a pod (that gets automatically created in default Service Account)
Will create a Service Account
Creating a deployment that will be using appsa Service Account.
For many of us, Kubernetes is the solution for some of the never-ending microservices application delivery problems, but Kubernetes setup and management comes with its own set of challenges. According to a report, there are 9 key Kubernetes challenges. In this blog, I’m focusing on the two primary challenges, which are Security & Networking.
Why is Security becoming such a Big Challenge for Organizations?
It’s mainly because Kubernetes is very complex and highly vulnerable if not monitored properly. As we implement Kubernetes for container orchestration, more and more containers are deployed and due to its distributed nature, hence it gets difficult to investigate which container might have vulnerabilities. Hence as a result the organization will start to feel the threat of outsiders breaching in.
One of the best examples of this situation: In 2018 Tesla’s Kubernetes admin console (which was not password protected) was breached by Hackers and mining of cryptocurrencies was done by Tesla’s cloud resources on amazon web services (AWS).
Kubernetes usage appears to be a popular pattern being adopted by enterprises these days. Recently, 56 percent of the organizations that polled for the 2020 edition of The State of Enterprise Open Sourcereport, said that they expected their use of containers to increase in the next 12 months. The report polled 950 IT leaders.
Kubernetes has practically become the new norm for container orchestration. Enterprises going cloud-native consider Kubernetes as one of the important elements contributing to the success of implementing a cloud-first strategy. If you’re planning to re-architect your business architecture, I’m sure Kubernetes is the first thing that comes to your mind, isn’t it? Let’s take a look at other interesting Kubernetes facts.
According to a report by Statista, one-third of organizations surveyed by a source is using the container technology system- Kubernetes in some way among which, – 21% of the organizations are involved in researching Kubernetes -13% of the organizations are experimenting with Kubernetes -12% of the organizations are running Kubernetes in production -8% of the organizations are using Kubernetes for developing & testing
But with the increased adoption of Kubernetes, the need for choosing the best Kubernetes management platform to meet business requirements has become a major challenge for enterprises these days.
The blog highlights the benefits of Kubernetes and features that you should consider while choosing a Kubernetes management platform for enabling a smooth and effective Kubernetes adoption to drive productivity and business value.
Due to high traffic volume, initially, Tinder’s engineering team faced certain challenges of scale and stability. So, what did they do? In order to migrate 200 services, Tinder’s engineering team executed a Kubernetes cluster, with a total of 1,000 nodes, 15,000 pods, and 48,000 running containers. That wasn’t an easy task at first, but once the team gained the knowledge and experience, they could easily containerize and deploy their applications on Kubernetes. Finally, they could easily migrate the services with higher scalability and stability.
Why do we need Kubernetes?
You can use Kubernetes to deploy your services, roll out new releases with zero downtime, and scale (or de-scale) those services. Listed below are five crucial business capabilities that Kubernetes can drive in an enterprise–no matter it’s large or small.
Faster time to market
IT cost optimization
Improved scalability and availability
Multi-cloud (and hybrid cloud) flexibility
Effective migration to the cloud
With the incredible benefits of Kubernetes, comes the huge challenge of choosing a Kubernetes management console that suits your business needs.
Features to Consider when choosing a Kubernetes Management Platform!
While you can choose various options to install and implement Kubernetes from scratch, many companies opt for a Kubernetes Management platform to make things easy. Here is how you can choose the right Kubernetes management solution and build the perfect Kubernetes management console for your enterprise.
Production Grade
Since configuring Kubernetes can be resource-intensive and time-consuming. Thus, a production-ready solution can help you overcome these configuration hassles for seamless cluster management. The solution should automate all management tasks within the cluster in order to speed up your production rate. It should support the creation of namespaces, ingress, config maps, and secrets with minimal complexity and maximum ease. Other important capabilities that make a platform, the best Kubernetes management platform include,
Removing a cluster
Updating the control plane and node computing
Maintaining and updating the nodes
Upgrading the Kubernetes API version
Securing the cluster
Upgrading the cluster
Multi/Hybrid Cloud
Kubernetes can be used anywhere so you can deploy to public/private/hybrid clouds, with greater availability and security. A Kubernetes management console should have the capabilities that can help to avoid tooling bursts, potential hazards with “vendor lock-in” and management overhead.
Check if the platform you’re choosing allows you to work with multiple cloud vendors, build a common infrastructure between clouds, cloud regions, and the data center. This allows apps to run in various environments without the need to adapt them. Simply put, the platform should enable smooth, simple, and quick cluster onboarding allowing users to onboard an existing cluster from any cloud or on-premise infrastructure.
Intuitive Manageability
Managing a production-grade Kubernetes cluster with complete security, scalability, observability, and reliability is quite taxing and challenging. With the right Kubernetes management platform in hand, things can be managed well. Ensure that the platform you choose has automated intelligent monitoring capabilities to provide you with the necessary details of early detection and intervention to prevent disasters.
Kubernetes platform must have built-in features such as self-healing and automated rollouts/rollbacks, for effective cluster management. Moreover, it should support schedulers that can monitor a cluster and perform actions whenever the actual state does not match the desired state. Schedulers are operators that continuously monitor the system and fix discrepancies between the desired and actual state.
A platform that supports easy integration and set-up of monitoring and log management tools such as Prometheus, Grafana, Alert Manager, ElasticSearch Fluentd, and Kibana can prove to be a good choice. These tools help to collect information about the performance of containerized applications.
BuildPiper- The Best Kubernetes Management Platform for your Business!
The approach to Managed Kubernetes Delivery with BuildPiper goes beyond the initial setup and ease of manageability and is aimed at making Kubernetes —microservices application ready!Managed Kubernetes delivery is structured around 4 primary levers that club together to enable production-ready Microservices.
Setting up Secure, Scalable, Compliant, and cost-optimized K8s Cluster
Deep insights and observability
Configuration & Maintenance for Microservices ready K8s
Enhanced Production-Grade Microservice Tooling
For easy management of applications deployment on Kubernetes, BuildPiper makes use of Helm, which makes it the best Kubernetes management platform for your business. Helm is a tool that is used for managing Kubernetes’ packages called charts. Helm charts provide great help in defining, installing, and upgrading Kubernetes applications.
How can BuildPiper help?
BuildPiper helps in the complete management of your Microservices Application Delivery including Kubernetes. It provides application and infrastructure-centric views into the K8s clusters so that you can effectively manage, troubleshoot, and scale your environment.
Being a Kubernetes management console allowing DevOps teams to operate a dynamic environment at scale, BuildPiper helps to,
Achieve immediate and comprehensive visibility into all the cluster entities
Gain and monitor accurate performance and status data with deep insights
Integrate and set up infrastructure monitoring and log management tools with out-of-the-box product functionalities.
Enable further configuration of Kubernetes to make it ready for microservices consumption.
BuildPiper is the perfect Kubernetes management console that enables effective and hassle-free cluster management in combination with its other added functionalities of Managed Microservices, Secure CI/CD Pipelines, Security, Compliance, & Observability, and much more!
BuildPiper allows you to drive business value across microservices application delivery from Day 1 with a 10X reduction in time & investments needed and a shift left philosophy & NoOps mindset for multi/hybrid cloud. Talk to our experts NOW!
