Kubernetes Tutorial for Beginners: Basics, Features, Architecture

Before we start this Kubernetes tutorial, let’s learn:

What is Kubernetes?

Kubernetes is a container management system developed on the Google platform. Kubernetes helps to manage containerised applications in various types of physical, virtual, and cloud environments. Google Kubernetes is a highly flexible container tool to consistently deliver complex applications running on clusters of hundreds to thousands of individual servers.

Why you need containers?

Today’s internet user never accept downtime. Therefore developers have to find a method to perform maintenance and update without interrupting their services.

Therefore container, which is isolated environments. It includes everything needed for application to run. It makes it easy for a developer to edit and deploying apps. Moreover, containerization has become a preferred method for packaging, deploying, and update web apps.

What task are performed by Kubernetes?

Kubernetes is the Linux kernel which is used for distributed systems. It helps you to be abstract the underlying hardware of the nodes(servers) and offers a consistent interface for applications that consume the shared pool of resources.

Why use Kubernetes?

Kubernetes helps you to control the resource allocation and traffic management for cloud applications and microservices. It also helps to simplify various aspects of service-oriented infrastructures. Kubernetes allows you to assure where and when containerized applications run and helps you to find resources and tools you want to work with.

Features of Kubernetes

Here are the essential Kubernetes features:

• Automated Scheduling
• Self-Healing Capabilities
• Automated rollouts & rollback
• Horizontal Scaling & Load Balancing
• Offers environment consistency for development, testing, and production
• Infrastructure is loosely coupled to each component can act as a separate unit
• Provides a higher density of resource utilization
• Offers enterprise-ready features
• Application-centric management
• Auto-scalable infrastructure
• You can create predictable infrastructure

Kubernetes Basics

Now in this Kubernetes tutorial, we will learn some important Basics of Kubernetes:

• Cluster

  It is a collection of hosts(servers) that helps you to aggregate their available resources. That includes ram, CPU, ram, disk, and their devices into a usable pool.

• Master

  The master is a collection of components which make up the control panel of Kubernetes. These components are used for all cluster decisions. It includes both scheduling and responding to cluster events.

• Node

  It is a single host which is capable of running on a physical or virtual machine. A node should run both kube-proxy, minikube, and kubelet which are considered as a part of the cluster.

• Namespace

  It is a logical cluster or environment. It is a widely used method which is used for scoping access or dividing a cluster.

Kubernetes Architecture

Below is a detailed Kubernetes architecture diagram:

Master Node

The master node is the first and most vital component which is responsible for the management of Kubernetes cluster. It is the entry point for all kind of administrative tasks. There might be more than one master node in the cluster to check for fault tolerance.

The master node has various components like API Server, Controller Manager, Scheduler, and ETCD. Let see all of them.

API Server: The API server acts as an entry point for all the REST commands used for controlling the cluster.

Scheduler

The scheduler schedules the tasks to the slave node. It stores the resource usage information for every slave node. It is responsible for distributing the workload.

It also helps you to track how the working load is used on cluster nodes. It helps you to place the workload on resources which are available and accept the workload.

Etcd

etcd components store configuration detail and wright values. It communicates with the most component to receive commands and work. It also manages network rules and port forwarding activity.

Worker/Slave nodes

Worker nodes are another essential component which contains all the required services to manage the networking between the containers, communicate with the master node, which allows you to assign resources to the scheduled containers.

• Kubelet: gets the configuration of a Pod from the API server and ensures that the described containers are up and running.
• Docker Container: Docker container runs on each of the worker nodes, which runs the configured pods
• Kube-proxy: Kube-proxy acts as a load balancer and network proxy to perform service on a single worker node
• Pods: A pod is a combination of single or multiple containers that logically run together on nodes

Other Key Terminologies

Replication Controllers

A replication controller is an object which defines a pod template. It also controls parameters to scale identical replicas of Pod horizontally by increasing or decreasing the number of running copies.

Replication Sets

Replication sets are an interaction on the replication controller design with flexibility in how the controller recognizes the pods it is meant to manage. It replaces replication controllers because of their higher replicate selection capability.

Deployments

Deployment is a common workload which can be directly created and manage. Deployment use replication set as a building block which adds the feature of life cycle management.

Stateful Sets

It is a specialized pod control which offers ordering and uniqueness. It is mainly used to have fine-grained control, which you have a particular need regarding deployment order, stable networking, and persistent data.

Daemon Sets

Daemon sets are another specialized form of pod controller that runs a copy of a pod on every node in the cluster. This type of pod controller is an effective method for deploying pods that allows you to perform maintenance and offers services for the nodes themselves.

Kubernetes vs. Docker Swarm

Here are important differences between Kubernetes vs Docker.

Advantages of Kubernetes

• Easy organization of service with pods
• It is developed by Google, who bring years of valuable industry experience to the table
• Largest community among container orchestration tools
• Offers a variety of storage options, including on-premises, SANs and public clouds
• Adheres to the principals of immutable infrastructure
• Kubernetes can run on-premises bare metal, OpenStack, public clouds Google, Azure, AWS, etc.
• Helps you to avoid vendor lock issues as it can use any vendor-specific APIs or services except where Kubernetes provides an abstraction, e.g., load balancer and storage.
• Containerization using kubernetes allows package software to serve these goals. It will enable applications that need to be released and updated without any downtime.
• Kubernetes allows you to assure those containerized applications run where and when you want and helps you to find resources and tools which you want to work.

Disadvantages of Kubernetes

• Kubenetes dashboard not as useful as it should be
• Kubernetes is a little bit complicated and unnecessary in environments where all development is done locally.
• Security is not very effective.

Summary

• Container helps an organization to perform maintenance and update without interrupting services
• Kubernetes is an example of a container management system developed in the Google platform.
• The biggest advantage of using Kubernetes is that it can run on-premises OpenStack, public clouds Google, Azure, AWS, etc.
• Kubernetes offers automated Scheduling and Self-Healing Capabilities.
• Cluster, master, node, and namespace are important basic of kubernetes
• Master node and work node are important components of Kubernetes architecture.
• Replication Controllers, Replication sets, Deployments, Stateful Sets, Daemon Sets are other important terms used in Kubernetes.
• Docker swarm does not allow auto-scaling while Kubernetes allows auto-scaling.
• The biggest drawback of Kubenetes is that it’s dashboard not very useful and effective