This is more or less a follow up post to the one I wrote back in 2015 about the state of containers in the IT World as I saw it at the time. I started off that post talking about the freight train that was containerization along with a cheeky meme… fast forward four years and the narrative around containers has changed significantly, and now there is new cargo on that freight train… and it’s all about Kubernetes!

In my previous role working at a Cloud Provider, shortly after writing that 2015 post I started looking at ways to offer containers as a service. At the time there wasn’t much, but I dabbled a bit in Docker and if you remember at the time, VMware’s AppCatalyst… which I used to deploy basic Docker images on my MBP (think it’s still installed actually) with the biggest highlight for me at the time being able to play Docker Doom!

I also was involved in some of the very early alphas for what was at the time vSphere Integrated Containers (Docker containers as VMs on vCenter) which didn’t catch on compared to what is currently out there for the mass deployment and management of containers. VMware did evolve it’s container strategy with Pivotal Container Services, however those outside the VMware world where already looking elsewhere as the reality of containerised development along with serverless and cloud has taken hold and become accepted as a mainstream IT practice.

Even four or five years ago I was hearing the word Kubernetes often. I remember sitting in my last VMware vChampion session with where Kit Colbert was talking about Kuuuuuuuurbenites (the American pronunciation stuck in my mind) and how we all should be ready to understand how it works as it was about to take over the tech world. I didn’t listen… and now, I have a realisation that I should have started looking into Kubernetes and container management in general more seriously sooner.

Not because it’s fundamental to my career path…not because I feel like I was lagging technically and not because there have been those saying for years that Kubernetes will win the race. There is an opportunity to take off the blinkers and learn something that is being adopted by understanding the fundamentals about what makes it tick. In terms of discovery and learning, I see this much like what I have done over the past eighteen months with automation and orchestration.

From a backup and recovery point of view, we have been seeing an increase in the field of customers and partners asking how they backup containers and Kubernetes. For a long time the standard response was “why”. But it’s becoming more obvious that the initial stateless nature of containers is making way for more stateful persistent workloads. So now, it’s not only about backing up the management plane.. but also understanding that we need to protect the data that sits within the persistent volumes.

What I’ll Be Doing:

I’ve been interested for a long time superficially about Kubernetes, reading blogs here and there and trying to absorb information where possible. But as with most things in life, you best learn by doing! My intention is to create a series of blog posts that describe my experiences with different Kubernetes platforms to ultimately deploy a simple web application with persistent storage.

These posts will not be how-tos on setting up a Kubernetes cluster etc. Rather, I’ll look at general config, application deployment, usability, cost and whatever else becomes relevant as I go through the process of getting the web application online.

Off the top of my head, i’ll look to work with these platforms:

  • Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE)
  • Amazon Elastic Container Service for Kubernetes (EKS)
  • Azure Container Service (AKS)
  • Docker
  • Pivotal Container Service (PKS)
  • vCloud Director CSE
  • Platform9

The usual suspects are there in terms of the major public cloud providers. From a Cloud and Service Provider point of view, the ability to offer Kubernetes via vCloud Director is very exciting and if I was still in my previous role I would be looking to productize that ASAP. For a different approach, I have always likes what Platform 9 has done and I was also an early tester of their initial managed vSphere support, which has now evolved into managed OpenStack and Kubernetes. They also recently announced Managed Applications through the platform which i’ve been playing with today.

Wrapping Up:

This follow up post isn’t really about the state of containers today, or what I think about how and where they are being used in IT today. The reality is that we live in a hybrid world and workloads are created as-is for specific platforms on a need by need basis. At the moment there is nothing to say that virtualization in the form of Virtual Machines running on hypervisors on-premises are being replaced by containers. The reality is that between on-premises, public clouds and in between…workloads are being deployed in a variety of fashions… Kubernetes seems to have come to the fore and has reached some level of maturity that makes it a viable option… that could no be said four years ago!

It’s time for me (maybe you) to dig underneath the surface!

Link:

https://kubernetes.io/docs/concepts/overview/what-is-kubernetes/

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