Learn the basics of Kubernetes and discover how this container orchestration tool makes developers' jobs easier.
Kubernetes is a standard open-source container orchestration platform for managing multiple, often self-contained applications running in separate containers.The Docker containerisation project was launched in 2013, and as containers have become more common around the world, coordinating massive distributed container applications has become increasingly difficult as the technology has advanced. Soon after, Kubernetes offered a practical solution to this problem, becoming a central player in the container revolution by greatly simplifying the management of containerised systems at scale.
The main purpose of this blog article is to explain how to deploy and use modern applications and the importance of Kubernetes as a basic container orchestration tool.
What is Kubernetes?
Kubernetes, also known as k8s, is a widely used container orchestration tool used to deploy and update applications without downtime. The advantage of the technology is that it allows for easy, automatic scaling of resources as requests to the server increase or decrease, with high availability. It also provides intelligent management, resource allocation and other services that can save the user a significant amount of money.
What are the key benefits of Kubernetes?
Using Kubernetes, developers can easily build cloud-native applications, aided by k8s as a runtime framework. In Kubernetes, container-based applications and services are built using patterns, so these are the tools that a Kubernetes developer needs.
Here are the key benefits of Kubernetes
- Optimise the resources needed to run enterprise applications, making better use of infrastructure.
- Monitor and automate application deployments and updates.
- Self-healing environment with automatic rollback function.
- Load balanced and load scaled applications can be easily developed.
- Manages services declaratively to ensure that installed applications always run as expected.
- It monitors the status of applications through automatic placement, automatic restart, automatic replication and automatic scaling, and performs automatic self-repair if necessary.
Why do you need Kubernetes?
Kubernetes is an easy way to deploy and manage containerized, cloud-native or legacy applications, as well as microservices and refactors.
To meet rapidly evolving business needs, companies' development teams need to create new products and services faster and faster. Cloud-native architecture starts with containerized microservices, which enables faster development and also makes it much easier to transform and optimize existing software.
- As the number of Internet users grows, it has become a basic requirement that applications should not have downtime for maintenance and updates.
- It is in every organisation's interest to scale deployments according to user demand, i.e. if more user requests are received, automatically allocate more CPU (central processing unit) and memory to the deployment, otherwise the corporate server will crash.
- With cloud services, no one wants to pay for more CPU and memory than they actually need. That's why it's important to have an intelligent system that efficiently allocates and manages CPU and memory utilisation according to changing needs.
This is where Kubernetes comes in, which effectively fulfils all of the above requirements, while also taking a lot of the burden off the shoulders of developers.
The most important technical aspects of the k8s
Kubernetes is designed as a high-availability cluster of interconnected computers operating as a single unit. This level of abstraction makes it easy to deploy applications without having to think too much about which machines the application should run on. One of the main roles of Kubernetes is therefore to efficiently automate the distribution of application containers across clusters of computers.
What does a typical computer cluster in Kubernetes consist of?
Node: where we run our applications
A Node can be a VM (virtual machine) or a physical computer used as a worker machine in the Kubernetes cluster to actually run the application.
Master: used to coordinate the cluster.
The Master is responsible for managing the cluster. The master nodes coordinate all the activities of the cluster, such as scheduling applications, maintaining their health, scaling applications, and rolling out new updates. The master node contains processes that continuously monitor the deployment for CPU or memory demands and intelligently allocate them in the form of new pods, automatically scaling the application to handle the large number of requests coming to the server.
Most public cloud services, such as Amazon Web Service (AWS), Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud, also have automatic Kubernetes support, making it easier to deploy, maintain and even move application containers between cloud and ground, cloud to cloud.
A Kubernetes cluster can be installed on virtual or physical machines. On the local machine, you first install a software called Minikube, which creates a virtual machine and installs a simple cluster containing only a single node. Minikube thus provides a CLI (command line interface) through which you can execute various commands and simulate a small Kubernetes cluster.
Here are some useful Kubernetes CLI commands:
- kubectl get nodes - Returns the number of working nodes available in the k8s cluster.
- kubectl get pods - Returns the number of Running pods in the cluster.
- kubectl create deployment {DEPLOYMENTNAME} -image={IMAGENAME} - Creates a new deployment on the given cluster. The deployment requires the exact name of the deployment and the image from which the new deployment can be made.
- kubectl logs {POD_NAME} - Prints the pod logs for the given pod name. These logs can be useful for debugging your application, for example.
- kubectl cluster-info - Get all metadata related to the cluster.
- kubectl delete pod {POD_NAME} - Deletes the installed pods associated with the pod specified by name.
Concluding thoughts
Kubernetes development therefore has many advantages, as it takes a lot of the stress of deployment off the shoulders of developers. In addition, k8s helps with automatic scaling, intelligent use of available resources, and minimizes application downtime for maintenance or upgrades. Because A k8s allows automation of almost everything, it offers an IT solution that is not only cost-effective in terms of human resources, but also financially efficient, and flexible to the individual needs of companies.
Why is the NK8S Kubernetes platform service the winning choice?
- We are a unique VMware Cloud Provider and Kubernetes Certified Service Provider in our country.
- We comply with the strictest security requirements: our customers' data does not leave the borders of Hungary; our service complies with the MNB's recommendation 4/2019.
- We provide continuous development testing and deployment with the support of our DevOps engineers.