Container Storage and Data Protection for Applications on Kubernetes

Chapter 1. Why Kubernetes in Production Is Hard

Kubernetes is the foundation for the modern cloud native application architecture. By running microservices in containers, the enterprise can move from a hardware-defined model, tied to physical or virtual machines, to a software-defined paradigm that enables horizontal scale across on-premises, cloud, and hybrid environments.

When moving to Kubernetes, day one is not as straightforward as simply deploying software. While the number of people who are well versed in Kubernetes operations is growing, there are still challenges. The following sections focus on three of the most significant challenges: automating storage, maintaining a cluster, and managing storage designed for a different computing era.

Automating Storage

Kubernetes was originally designed to handle stateless workloads, which don’t store data or other information about previous operations. While Kubernetes has evolved to handle stateful applications, which store persistent data, it has not grown to automate storage the same way it handles compute resources. Instead, Kubernetes relies on storage that sits outside the orchestration system.

Automating storage is not easy, and storage administrators often have plenty of work to do. Provisioning storage as workloads appear and disappear, or as applications scale up and down, can be time-consuming operations even when assisted by automation. Configuring systems to add, change, and remove resources in response to thresholds ...