3 Deploying your first application

This chapter covers

Running a local Kubernetes cluster on your laptop
Setting up a cluster on Google Kubernetes Engine
Setting up a cluster on Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service
Setting up and using the kubectl command-line tool
Deploying an application in Kubernetes and making it available across the globe
Horizontally scaling the application

The goal of this chapter is to show you how to run a local single-node development Kubernetes cluster or set up a proper, managed multi-node cluster in the cloud. Once your cluster is running, you’ll use it to run the container you created in the previous chapter.

Note

You’ll find the code files for this chapter at https://github.com/luksa/kubernetes-in-action-2nd-edition/tree/master/Chapter03

3.1 Deploying a Kubernetes cluster

Setting up a full-fledged, multi-node Kubernetes cluster isn’t a simple task, especially if you’re not familiar with Linux and network administration. A proper Kubernetes installation spans multiple physical or virtual machines and requires proper network setup to allow all containers in the cluster to communicate with each other.

3.1.1 Using the built-in Kubernetes cluster in Docker Desktop

3.1.2 Running a local cluster using Minikube

3.1.3 Running a local cluster using kind (Kubernetes in Docker)

3.1.4 Creating a managed cluster with Google Kubernetes Engine

3.1.5 Creating a cluster using Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service

3.1.6 Deploying a multi-node cluster from scratch

3.2 Interacting with Kubernetes

3.2.1 Setting up kubectl - the Kubernetes command-line client

3.2.2 Configuring kubectl to use a specific Kubernetes cluster

3.2.3 Using kubectl

3.2.4 Interacting with Kubernetes through web dashboards

3.3 Running your first application on Kubernetes

3.3.1 Deploying your application

3.3.2 Exposing your application to the world

3.3.3 Horizontally scaling the application

3.3.4 Understanding the deployed application

3.4 Summary