Kubernetes Engine? Why?
If you’ve ever heard of container orchestration, sure you’ve heard of Kubernetes. The Google’s solution is one of the biggest, popular and, if you are like me, the scarier.
THE MONSTER
All those Kubernetes concepts: pod’s, services and God knows what else, make a mess in your brain. And, finally, when you pass that point comes the one million dollars question: “Where/How do I use it?”
Thankfully, Google (kind of) made things easier with Kubernetes Engine (Container Engine).
THE PAAS
Kubernetes Engine provides a managed environment for deploying, managing, and scaling your containerized applications.
In other words, a PaaS. This means that you don’t have to worry with machines or install anything. Everything is ready for you.
But it doesn’t end here, it provides advanced cluster management features:
- Google Cloud Platform’s load-balancing for Compute Engine instances;
- Node pools to designate subsets of nodes within a cluster for additional flexibility;
- Automatic scaling of your cluster’s node instance count;
- Automatic upgrades for your cluster’s node software;
- Node auto-repair to maintain node health and availability;
- Logging and Monitoring with Stackdriver for visibility into your cluster.
As expected, the Kubernetes versions is always up-to-date, so that you can take advantage of it’s newer features.
And the best part, for me at least, this won’t cost nothing! You pay only for the cluster nodes you are using.
NOW WHAT?
Kubernetes, as i said, is one of, if not the one, most loved container orchestration on the internet. I personally like it, and see it as a viable option both for being a simple to set up and for being “free”.
If you are looking for an orchestration tool or even starting to use docker in production, you should definitely check this out.
And if you alware have your entire sistem in docker, i’m not saying that you need to go take a look in the docs, make a quick start and then change all your system to it, but eventually you will get there.
