Articles | C2C

Containerization Strategies for Modernizing with Kubernetes

Written by Stephen C2C | Dec 7, 2021 6:00:00 AM

Organizations with all kinds of storage and hosting needs are adopting cloud infrastructure as a preferred solution. For these organizations, this means lower costs, faster speeds, and enhanced performance in general. What does this mean for the teams managing this infrastructure? In many cases, it means adapting to new strategies and a new environment. Among the most popular of these strategies right now is containerization, and among the most popular of these environments is Kubernetes.

Mattias Gees is a solutions architect at Jetstack, a cloud-native services provider building enterprise platforms using Kubernetes and OpenShift. With Kubernetes and Containerization gathering momentum as a topic of interest among our community members and contributors in recent months, we wanted to invite Gees to share what he has learned as a containerization specialist using Kubernetes on a daily basis. Gees and other representatives of Jetstack, a C2C Platinum partner, were excited to join us for a Deep Dive on the topic to share some of these strategies directly with the C2C community.

Gees started his presentation with some background on Jetstack, and then offered a detailed primer on Kubernetes and its capabilities for containerizing on the cloud. This introduction provided context for Gees to introduce and explain a series of containerization strategies, starting with load balancing on Google Kubernetes Engine:

frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen>

Another strategic solution Gees pointed out was one that has also been a frequent topic of discussion within our community, Continuous Delivery and Continuous Deployment (CD):

frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen>

Kubernetes is a complex and dynamic environment, and different cloud engineers and architects will use it in different ways. To give a sampling of the different potential strategies Kubernetes makes available, Gees listed some advanced Kubernetes features, including health checks, storage of config and secrets in Kubernetes objects, basic autoscaling, and advanced placement of containers:

https://vimeo.com/645382667

The most impressive segment of Gees' presentation was his overview of the Kubernetes platform, including a screenshot of his own cloud-native landscape:

frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen>

Gees concluded the presentation with a breakdown of the different team roles associated with Kubernetes modernization, stressing that implementing the many containerization strategies he identified is not the work of one person, but many working in concert toward common goals:

frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen>

Are you an architect working with Kubernetes in a cloud-native environment? Do you prefer any of these containerization strategies? Can you think of any you'd like to add? Reach out to us in the community and let us know!

 

Extra Credit:

 

frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen> frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen> frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen>