Kubernetes is an open-source platform for automating deployment, scaling, and operations of application containers across clusters of hosts, providing container-centric infrastructure.

Kubernetes enables speed and efficiency to respond to customer demand. Deploy application quickly that is predictable. Scale on the fly, deploy on the fly, zero/near-zero downtime. Optimal server resource utilisation.

More on why Kubernetes - https://kubernetes-v1-4.github.io/docs/whatisk8s/

Kubernetes provides multiple solutions to build, test & deployment locally and on production infrastructure, more.

For the purpose of this post, I’m using a local build & test deployment using Minikube. This is available for OSX & Linux OS. I’m using OSX.

I found Kubernetes interactive documentation is a great way to practice commands side by side while trying to understand & setup Kubernetes cluster & deploying apps - https://kubernetes.io/docs/tutorials/kubernetes-basics/

Install Minikube

Latest release https://github.com/kubernetes/minikube/releases

Install Kubectl

It is a command line interface for running commands against Kubernetes clusters.

Installation steps - https://kubernetes.io/docs/tasks/tools/install-kubectl/

Start & Check status of Minikube

$ minikube start
$ minikube status

minikube: Running
cluster: Running
kubectl: Correctly Configured: pointing to minikube-vm at 192.168.99.100

Run this command to open the Kubernetes dashboard:

minikube dashboard

Check Kubernetes nodes -

$ kubectl get nodes
NAME       STATUS    AGE       VERSION
minikube   Ready     6d        v1.7.5

Deploying a Containerized App

There are two ways one can do this, by using Minikube/Kubernetes dashboard or using Kubectl CLI interface.

Create a deployment by clicking the + symbol from right top;

Provide details and location of your image from Docker Hub;

If all goes well, you should then see Deployment, Pods, Service created properly. Note, I’m using it as a External Service, in a production setup you may have to expose service in a more controlled and secure manner, more on this in separate post later…hopefully soon.

Here I’ve deployed a SpringBoot microservice “internalapis” which is consumed by a web app “frontend”.

You can get external ports for your local services using-

$ kubectl get service
NAME              CLUSTER-IP   EXTERNAL-IP   PORT(S)          AGE
hello-minikube    10.0.0.221   <nodes>       8080:30598/TCP   6d
internalapis      10.0.0.191   <pending>     9000:32342/TCP   4d
kubernetes        10.0.0.1     <none>        443/TCP          6d
newway-frontend   10.0.0.33    <pending>     3000:31247/TCP   2d

And to test services -

http://192.168.99.100:32342/internalapis/users

Test web app - http://192.168.99.100:31247/frontend

Hope this helps to get started.

This can also be achieved using Kubectl commands - https://kubernetes.io/docs/tutorials/kubernetes-basics/