Kubernetes for Normal People

How can we use tooling to handle the complexity of kubernetes for normal people?

Terraform

Create cloud resources such as VPCs and the Kubernetes cluster with Terraform. There are Terraform modules for AWS EKS and Azure AKS or GCP. Use CI/CD to run Terraform. See repo terraform-github-actions that demonstrates using GitHub actions to run Terraform.

Flux V2

Create all Kubernetes resources with Flux V2 from standard published helm charts. Have one git repo with cluster directory for each cluster and when you merge to main branch flux will automatically apply the helm changes to the cluster. See Introduction to GitOps on Kubernetes with Flux v2. Also see flux-examples.

Lens

Install Lens to show the status of various Kubernetes resources as this is much easier that entering kubectl commands.

To configure kubeconfig file for AWS EKS for lens in your command line:

export AWS_PROFILE=myprofile
aws eks — region eu-west-1 update-kubeconfig — name myclustername

Kubectl and Cloud CLI Tool

• Install kubectl as not everything can be done in lens.
• Install the CLI for your cloud environment For example AWS CLI

Updating kubernetes resources with kubectl

Lens is not so great and updating resources( When you are say debugging) so here is an example using kubectl:

kubectl config set-cluster arn:aws:eks:eu-west-1:09999999999:cluster/corpcluster-MDY678XYZ
kubectl get clusterRoleBinding -o yaml controller-manager > binding.yaml
kubectl get deployment -o yaml app-abc -n app-abc-ns > originalDeployment.yaml
kubectl delete deployment app-abc -n app-abc-ns

make changes then

kubectl apply -f <new yaml file>

SSH into a container in Kubernetes

using bash:

kubectl exec -it [POD_NAME] — namespace [NAMESPACE] — /bin/bash

Or use sh for Alpine based containers:

kubectl exec -it [POD_NAME] — namespace [NAMESPACE] — /bin/sh

References

terraform-github-actions

flux-examples

Introduction to GitOps on Kubernetes with Flux v2

EKS Workshop

AWS Samples EKS Workshop

kubectl commands

JSONPath Support

How to parse json format output of : kubectl get pods using jsonpath

Kubectl output options

Kubernetes Cheat Sheet

How to SSH to docker container in kubernetes cluster?

8 Kubernetes Tips and Tricks

Top 10 Kubernetes tips and tricks

Cloud Academy Administering Kubernetes Clusters

Platform Operations on Kubernetes (POOK)

Keywords: kubernetes, EKS, Terraform, Flux, Helm, Lens,kubectl, AWS CLI