The last post was to focus a little more on applications but not so much between the stateful and stateless types of applications but in the shape of application deployment. This was deploying KubeApps and using this as an application dashboard for Kubernetes. This post is going to focus on a deployment that is firstly “mission critical” and that contains a front end and a back end. Recently Dean and I covered this in a demo session we did at the London VMUG. I would also like to add here that the example nodejs application and mongodb back end was first created here. Dean alsoRead More →

In the last post, we talked about the Kubernetes context and how you can flip between different Kubernetes cluster control contexts from your Windows machine. We have also spoken about in this series how load balancing gives us better access to our application vs using the node port for access. This post will highlight how simple it is to deploy your load balancer and configure it for your home lab Kubernetes cluster. Roll your own Kubernetes Load Balancer If you deployed your Kubernetes cluster in Cloud, the cloud provider will take care of creating Load balancer instances. But if you are using bare metal forRead More →

In the last post, we covered an overview of Helm and the MinIO deployment to give us an option for testing later on workloads that require object storage. In this post, we are going to focus on context and how to make sure you have access from your desktop to your Kubernetes Cluster. Context Image is taken from Kubernetes.io Context is important, the ability to access your Kubernetes cluster from your desktop or laptop is required. Lots of different options out there and people use obviously different operating systems as their daily drivers. In the post we are going to be talking about Windows butRead More →

In the last post, we covered setting up dynamic shared storage with my NETGEAR ReadyNAS system for our Kubernetes storage configuration. This is what I have in my home lab but any NFS server would bring the same outcome for you in your configuration. This post will cover two areas we will continue to speak to Kubernetes storage options but we will cover object storage, I am going to use MinIO to be able to have an object storage option in my lab, I can use this to practice some tasks and demo things between Veeam Backup & Replication and Kasten and storing backup files.Read More →

In the last three parts we covered, starting from scratch and getting the Kubernetes platform ready, this was using some old hardware and creating some virtual machines to act as my nodes. But if you don’t have old hardware but you still wish to build out your cluster then these virtual machines can really sit wherever they need to, for example, they could be in the public cloud but remember this is going to cost you. My intention was to remove all costs as possible as this system I am using is always running in my home network as it acts as my backup serverRead More →

In the last post, we went through creating our home lab Kubernetes cluster and deploying the Kubernetes dashboard. In this post we are going to create a couple more stateless applications. What is BusyBox Several stripped-down Unix tools in a single executable file. Commonly referred to as the “Swiss army knife tool in Linux distributions” I began by just testing this following a walkthrough tutorial but then later realised that this is a great tool for troubleshooting within your Kubernetes pod. You can find out more information here on Docker Hub. kubectl run myshell –rm -it –image busybox – sh Some things you didn’t knowRead More →

In the last post, we walked through the pretty basic way of getting our physical and virtual environment ready for our Kubernetes cluster. This post will cover the Kubernetes cluster setup steps. Kubernetes Cluster At this stage, we just have 3 virtual machines running Ubuntu on a flat layer 2 network. Now things get a little more interesting, in one of the last steps of part 1 we touched on installing kubeadm and this is where I am going to focus my installation and configuration, however, you can use the more challenging approach and build out from scratch. Kubernetes the Hard Way on Bare Metal,Read More →