Guide to Kubernetes

Here at Densify, we are getting more and more questions about Kubernetes, containers and related management challenges. This ten-part guide is dedicated to addressing some of the most common questions we receive as an in-depth article series, so that Kubernetes administrators and architects may benefit from our experience. We are also providing a form at the bottom of this page, so that our readers can submit topic suggestions for future articles.

What is Kubernetes?

Originally released by Google on July 10, 2015 as a version 1.0, Kubernetes provides a “platform for automating deployment, scaling, and operations of application containers across clusters of hosts” (source). The open source Kubernetes project (sometimes abbreviated as K8s) is now overseen by the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF), which is in turn part of the Linux Foundation. In its June 2020 survey of 1,324 respondents, CNCF found that 83% of those surveyed use Kubernetes, up from 58% in 2018.

Kubernetes Tools & Best Practices

The typical questions that we receive can be generally categorized into two groups:

• Tooling
• Best Practices

The tooling questions are usually related to free and open source versions of popular associated tooling used in the industry. One common area of difficulty our customers face is in understanding the functional overlap or coverage between tooling options. For example, Terraform may be used to provision a cluster on AWS EKS, however some users ask whether they could or should also use eksctl, kubectl, CloudFormation, or kOps.

The chapters in this Kubernetes guide will address these challenges and more, including a walkthrough of core Kubernetes concepts and best practices.

The Chapters

Chapter 1: Use Terraform to provision AWS EKS

Are you considering using Terraform and AWS EKS together? Compare alternatives, follow the setup instructions, and read the best practices.

Read Chapter 1

Chapter 2: Hosted Kubernetes

Find out the advantages of using a hosting provider, review the key features offered by AWS, Azure and Google, and compare their pricing.

Read Chapter 2

Chapter 3: Use Helm to Deploy Applications on AWS EKS

Do you want to install applications on AWS EKS using Helm? Receive detailed instructions, and learn about its challenges and best practices.

Read Chapter 3

Chapter 4: Kubernetes kOps Tutorial

Learn the benefits of kOps and how to install and use it to manage clusters hosted on a public cloud platform.

Read Chapter 4

Chapter 5: 10 Kubernetes Best Practices to Know

Learn how to scale your Kubernetes clusters the right way.

Read Chapter 5

Chapter 6: Kustomize Tutorial

Learn how to implement and use Kustomize by receiving step by step instructions and examples.

Read Chapter 6

Chapter 7: How to Deploy a K8s Cluster Using Kubespray

Learn how to deploy Kubernetes clusters using Kubespray, an open-source deployment tool.

Read Chapter 7

Chapter 8: The Guide To Kube-State-Metrics

Learn how kube-state-metrics complements Metrics Server, understand the metrics, learn how to install, read about the best practices and common pitfalls.

Read Chapter 8

Chapter 9: Kubeadm Tutorial

Learn how to build Kubernetes clusters with kubeadm, compare it to kOps and Kubespray, and get installation instructions along with best practices.

Read Chapter 9