Kubernetes’ Cluster Autoscaler is a prime example of the differences between different managed Kubernetes offerings. We’ll use it to compare the three major Kubernetes-as-a-Service providers.
I’ll limit the comparison between the vendors only to the topics related to Cluster Autoscaling.
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Unlike GKE, EKS does not come with Cluster Autoscaler. We’ll have to configure it ourselves. We’ll need to add a few tags to the Autoscaling Group dedicated to worker nodes, to put additional permissions to the Role we’re using, and to install Cluster Autoscaler.
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Knowing that HorizontalPodAutoscaler (HPA) manages auto-scaling of our applications, the question might arise regarding replicas. Should we define them in our Deployments and StatefulSets, or should we rely solely on HPA to manage them? Instead of answering that question directly, we’ll explore different combinations and, based on results, define the strategy.
First, let’s see how many Pods we have in our cluster right now.
You might not be able to use the same commands since they assume that
go-demo-5application is already running, that the cluster has HPA enabled, that you cloned the code, and a few other things. I presented the outputs so that you can follow the logic without running the same commands.
kubectl -n go-demo-5 get pods
The output is as follows.
NAME READY STATUS RESTARTS AGE api-... 1/1 Running 0 27m api-... 1/1 Running 2 31m db-0 2/2 Running 0 20m db-1 2/2 Running 0 20m db-2 2/2 Running 0 21m
We can see that there are two replicas of the api Deployment, and three replicas of the db StatefulSets.
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Kubernetes is probably the biggest project we know. It is vast, and yet many think that after a few weeks or months of reading and practice they know all there is to know about it. It’s much bigger than that, and it is growing faster than most of us can follow. How far did you get in Kubernetes adoption?
From my experience, there are four main phases in Kubernetes adoption.
In the first phase, we create a cluster and learn intricacies of Kube API and different types of resources (e.g., Pods, Ingress, Deployments, StatefulSets, and so on). Once we are comfortable with the way Kubernetes works, we start deploying and managing our applications. By the end of this phase, we can shout “look at me, I have things running in my production Kubernetes cluster, and nothing blew up!” I explained most of this phase in The DevOps 2.3 Toolkit: Kubernetes.
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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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