Kubernetes: Up and Running

Chapter 3. Deploying a Kubernetes Cluster

Now that you have successfully built an application container, you are motivated to learn how to deploy it into a complete reliable, scalable distributed system. Of course, to do that, you need a working Kubernetes cluster. At this point, there are several cloud-based Kubernetes services that make it easy to create a cluster with a few command-line instructions. We highly recommend this approach if you are just getting started with Kubernetes. Even if you are ultimately planning on running Kubernetes on bare metal, it makes sense to quickly get started with Kubernetes, learn about Kubernetes itself, and then learn how to install it on physical machines.

Of course, using a cloud-based solution requires paying for those cloud-based resources as well as having an active network connection to the cloud. For these reasons, local development can be more attractive, and in that case the minikube tool provides an easy-to-use way to get a local Kubernetes cluster up running in a VM on your local laptop or desktop. Though this is attractive, minikube only creates a single-node cluster, which doesn’t quite demonstrate all of the aspects of a complete Kubernetes cluster. For that reason, we recommend people start with a cloud-based solution, unless it really doesn’t work for their situation. If you truly insist on starting on bare metal, Appendix A at the end of this book gives instructions for building a cluster from a collection of Raspberry Pi ...