Explaining continuous deployment (CDP) is easy. Implementing it is very hard, and the challenges are often hidden and unexpected. Depending on the maturity of your processes, architecture, and code, you might find out that the real problems do not lie in the code of a continuous deployment pipeline, but everywhere else. As a matter of fact, developing a pipeline is the easiest part.
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Every once in a while I get asked a variation of the same question. “Viktor, how do we create a learning culture in our company?” In most cases, my answer receives a bad reception. The short version of it is to “stop doing what you’re doing, and get out of the way.”
Engineers love learning. Most of us became engineers because we like to “play” with tech. And yet, people in many organizations complain that they are not allowed to innovate and that they don’t have time to learn. If my statement that engineers are playful kind of people, lack of innovation cannot be attributed to them, so we need to look for causes somewhere else.
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This article is an excerpt from The DevOps 2.4 Toolkit: Continuous Deployment To Kubernetes. It assumes that you already have a Kubernetes cluster with nginx Ingress. The article was tested with minikube, minishift, Docker for Mac/Windows, AWS with kops, and GKE. Furthermore, I will assume that you already installed Helm. Finally, I expect you to clone vfarcic/k8s-specs and execute the commands from inside it.
First things first… We need to find out the IP of our cluster or external LB if available. The commands that follow will differ from one cluster type to another.
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The difference between continuous integration, delivery, and deployment is not in processes, but in the level of confidence we have in them.
The continuous deployment process is relatively easy to explain, even though implementation might get tricky. We’ll split our requirements into two groups. We’ll start with a discussion about the overall goals that should be applied to the whole process. To be more precise, we’ll talk about what I consider non-negotiable requirements.
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Soon after I started working on The DevOps 2.3 Toolkit: Kubernetes, I realized that a single book could only scratch the surface. Kubernetes is vast, and no single book can envelop even all the core components. If we add community projects, the scope becomes even more extensive. Then we need to include hosting vendors and different ways to set up and manage Kubernetes. That would inevitably lead us to third-party solutions like OpenShift, Rancher, and DockerEE, to name a few. It doesn’t end there. We’d need to explore other types of community and third-party additions like those related to networking and storage. And don’t forget the processes like, for example, continuous delivery and deployment. All those things could not be explored in a single book so The DevOps 2.3 Toolkit: Kubernetes ended up being an introduction to Kubernetes. It can serve as the base for exploring everything else.
The moment I published the last chapter of The DevOps 2.3 Toolkit: Kubernetes, I started working on the next material. A lot of ideas and tryouts came out of it. It took me a while until the subject and the form of the forthcoming book materialized. After a lot of consultation with the readers of the previous book, the decision was made to explore continuous delivery and deployment processes in a Kubernetes cluster. The high-level scope of the book you are reading right now was born.
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The DevOps 2.2 Toolkit: Kubernetes is available through Amazon.com (and other worldwide sites) as well as through LeanPub.com. Soon it will be available through other retailers as well.
The goal of this book is not to convince you to adopt Kubernetes but to provide a detailed overview of its features. I want you to become confident in your Kubernetes knowledge and only then choose whether to embrace it. That is, unless you already made up your mind and stumbled upon this book in search of Kubernetes guidance.
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The video that follows is based on the material from The DevOps 2.3 Toolkit: Kubernetes.
