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Working With Persistent Volumes in Kubernetes

Introduction

The main reason behind containerization is to allow microservices to run in a stateless way. A container will receive provisioned cloud resources, perform its tasks, and then be destroyed as soon as the process is over. There are no traces of that container or tied up cloud resources to worry about. This was what has made containerization so popular in the first place.

Running microservices as stateless instances, however, is not always as easy as it seems. As more applications get refactored and more microservices rely on containers for efficiency, sticking with the stateless concept becomes harder and harder. Stateless containers don’t always have the ability to meet complex requirements.

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Testing Your Code on Terraform: Terratest

Infrastructure as Code (IAC) is more than just a paradigm. Developers are now able to deploy the code they have written on a capable cloud infrastructure without having to configure the cloud environment and provision resources manually. With the help of frameworks like Terraform, deploying supporting cloud infrastructure is as easy as writing a few lines of code.

As with other code constructing the app, however, infrastructure code can have faults and may cause errors. The need for improved testing—including testing the resulting infrastructure itself—is growing rapidly. For the longest time, developers relied on manual testing for the ‘solution’—but that comes with its own set of inherent problems: it’s time-consuming, inefficient, and error prone. Terratest mitigates many of the issues in manual testing.

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CI/CD with Cloud-Native Applications

Continuous integration and continuous delivery, an approach now known as CI/CD, is more than just an approach for developing and delivering apps to customers. While CI/CD changes how apps are deployed—introducing smaller iterations and faster deployment in the process—the approach itself gets adopted differently. Especially for cloud-native applications.

When you implement CI/CD for deploying cloud-native applications, the approach becomes an inseparable tool that streamlines the whole development and deployment phases. In fact, cloud-native applications can be made more robust in the long run when their development integrates with pipelines based on the CI/CD approach.

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50+ Useful Kubernetes Tools List – Part 2

Last year, we provided a list of Kubernetes tools that proved so popular we have decided to curate another list of some useful additions for working with the platform—among which are many tools that we personally use here at Caylent. Check out the original tools list here in case you missed it.

According to a recent survey done by Stackrox, the dominance Kubernetes enjoys in the market continues to be reinforced, with 86% of respondents using it for container orchestration.

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Kops vs. EKS: A Comparison Guide

It is fairly safe to say that Kubernetes is now the go-to solution when it comes to deploying containerized apps. EKS simplifies the creation of a secure and capable K8s environment on the Amazon Web Services platform and makes deploying clusters there that much easier. We’ve covered EKS on several occasions previously here and here to read more. As discussed previously, EKS does have its limitations, but the service is very easy to use, even when you are not a server administrator.

However, EKS and similar services are not the only way you can set up a production-grade K8s environment. Kops, or Kubernetes Operations, has been around for a while, offering CLI tools that make creating and managing Kubernetes installations easy. Kops is designed for those who want complete control over their Kubernetes environment but without the usual headaches.

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Intrusion Protection With Kubernetes

It’s hard to ignore Kubernetes nowadays when discussing container orchestration thanks to its robustness and comprehensive features. It is capable of supporting even the most complex apps and services. Despite the wealth of features built into Kubernetes, the platform only provides a set of built-in authentication and authorization mechanisms which all administrators can configure and use—the thing is, in the information security world, this is not enough. You need to optimize security yourself to take it next level.

With security becoming a primary concern in cloud deployment, knowing how to secure Kubernetes properly is a must. Putting a firewall layer on the host cluster is simply not enough, even though taking care of host security across all servers running Kubernetes containers can help.

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What’s New in Kubernetes v1.14

“We’re pleased to announce the delivery of Kubernetes 1.14, our first release of 2019!” Seeing a new blog post that starts with that sentence is always an exciting moment, isn’t it? Well, Kubernetes 1.14 is officially out, and boy, was it worth the wait.

It is a relatively big update, with the delivery bringing a whopping total of 31 enhancements, 10 of which are stable with an additional set of 12 enhancements that are in beta. There are some interesting changes to the ecosystem, but we are going to focus on the five most exciting ones. Let’s have a look!

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List of the Top DevOps Blogs and Books to Read for 2019

Marking its tenth anniversary this year, though DevOps is the youngest software methodology around, it grows year-by-year in popularity. DevOps continues to be an approach widely used by businesses and developers alike. Even new developers are learning about the philosophies behind DevOps and how its implementation can help make the delivery of applications and services more effective and efficient.

Learning about DevOps and various things related to the approach today is easy. There are so many resources that you can turn to, no matter what you want to learn on the subject. To help you get started, here are the top DevOps blogs and books to read for 2019.