Book Image

Mastering Kubernetes

By : Gigi Sayfan
Book Image

Mastering Kubernetes

By: Gigi Sayfan

Overview of this book

Kubernetes is an open source system to automate the deployment, scaling, and management of containerized applications. If you are running more than just a few containers or want automated management of your containers, you need Kubernetes. This book mainly focuses on the advanced management of Kubernetes clusters. It covers problems that arise when you start using container orchestration in production. We start by giving you an overview of the guiding principles in Kubernetes design and show you the best practises in the fields of security, high availability, and cluster federation. You will discover how to run complex stateful microservices on Kubernetes including advanced features as horizontal pod autoscaling, rolling updates, resource quotas, and persistent storage back ends. Using real-world use cases, we explain the options for network configuration and provides guidelines on how to set up, operate, and troubleshoot various Kubernetes networking plugins. Finally, we cover custom resource development and utilization in automation and maintenance workflows. By the end of this book, you’ll know everything you need to know to go from intermediate to advanced level.
Table of Contents (22 chapters)
Mastering Kubernetes
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewer
www.PacktPub.com
Customer Feedback
Preface
Index

Load balancing options


Load balancing is a critical capability in dynamic systems such as a Kubernetes cluster. Nodes, VMs, and pods come and go, but the clients can't keep track of which individual entities can service their requests. Even if they could, it would require a complicated dance of managing a dynamic map of the cluster, refreshing it frequently, and handling disconnected, unresponsive, or just slow nodes. Load balancing is a battle-tested and well-understood mechanism that adds a layer of indirection that hides the internal turmoil from the clients or consumers outside the cluster. There are options for external as well as internal load balancers. You can also mix and match and use both. The hybrid approach has its own particular pros and cons, such as performance versus flexibility.

External load balancer

An external load balancer is a load balancer that runs outside the Kubernetes cluster, but there must be an external load balancer provider that Kubernetes can interact with...