Cloud Native DevOps with Kubernetes, 2nd Edition

Foreword to the Second Edition

I was fortunate to be introduced to Kubernetes (and containers) fairly early in their lifetime. Whilst leading the DevOps practice for a boutique consultancy, I saw the potential for containers to bring huge benefits to a lot of our clients. That excitement and interest led me to take a role at Docker Inc., where I witnessed firsthand some of the incredible innovations taking shape in the burgeoning cloud native world.

Kubernetes began to pick up steam and I moved to Heptio (founded by the creators of the project at Google, later acquired by VMware) to focus on helping clients and the community learn and deploy it successfully. Because of this experience, I sometimes forget that many folks are just now exploring and adopting these technologies and their capabilities for the first time.

Recently I was working alongside a client and demonstrating the capability of Kubernetes to automatically provision a cloud load balancer, register the appropriate DNS name, and attach the relevant TLS certificate for their application to be publicly accessible. “That’s SO cool!” was their response to our success, and captures perfectly the feelings I experienced when first discovering and learning Kubernetes. Unfortunately, as with almost any advanced technology, it’s not all sunshine and roses.

One of the criticisms oft-leveled at Kubernetes is that it’s complicated, which (in my mind, at least!) seems to carry a negative connotation. I disagree, and prefer to describe ...