Mastering Kubernetes: Large scale container deployment and management

by Gigi Sayfan

Key FeaturesThis practical guide demystifies Kubernetes and ensures that your clusters are always available, scalable, and up to dateDiscover new features such as autoscaling, rolling updates, resource quotas, and cluster sizeMaster the skills of designing and deploying large clusters on various cloud platformsBook DescriptionKubernetes is an open source system to automate the deployment, scaling, and management of containerized applications. If you are running more than just a few containers or want automated management of your containers, you need Kubernetes.

This book mainly focuses on the advanced management of Kubernetes clusters. It covers problems that arise when you start using container orchestration in production. We start by giving you an overview of the guiding principles in Kubernetes design and show you the best practises in the fields of security, high availability, and cluster federation.

You will discover how to run complex stateful microservices on Kubernetes including advanced features as horizontal pod autoscaling, rolling updates, resource quotas, and persistent storage back ends. Using real-world use cases, we explain the options for network configuration and provides guidelines on how to set up, operate, and troubleshoot various Kubernetes networking plugins. Finally, we cover custom resource development and utilization in automation and maintenance workflows.

By the end of this book, you'll know everything you need to know to go from intermediate to advanced level.

What you will learnArchitect a robust Kubernetes cluster for long-time operationDiscover the advantages of running Kubernetes on GCE, AWS, Azure, and bare metalSee the identity model of Kubernetes and options for cluster federationMonitor and troubleshoot Kubernetes clusters and run a highly available KubernetesCreate and configure custom Kubernetes resources and use third-party resources in your automation workflowsDiscover the art of running complex stateful applications in your container environmentDeliver applications as standard packagesAbout the AuthorGigi Sayfan is the chief system architect of VRVIU?a stealth virtual reality start-up. Gigi has been developing software professionally for more than 20 years in domains as diverse as instant messaging, morphing, chip fabrication process control, embedded multi-media application for game consoles, brain-inspired machine learning, custom browser development, web services for 3D distributed game platforms, and most recently IoT/sensors.

He has written production code every day in many programming languages such as C, C , C#, Python, Java, Delphi, JavaScript, and even Cobol and PowerBuilder for operating systems such as Windows (3.11 through 7), Linux, Mac OSX, Lynx (embedded), and Sony Playstation. His technical expertise includes databases, low-level networking, distributed systems, unorthodox user interfaces, and the general software development lifecycle.

Table of ContentsUnderstanding Kubernetes ArchitectureCreating Kubernetes ClustersMonitoring, Logging, and TroubleshootingHigh Availability and ReliabilityConfiguring Kubernetes Security, Limits, and AccountsUsing Critical Kubernetes ResourcesHandling Kubernetes StorageRunning Stateful Application with KubernetesRolling Updates, Scalability and QuotasAdvance

Genres: Technology, Nonfiction, Computer Science

654 pages, Kindle Edition

Published May 25, 2017

Reviews

[Anton Antonov · Rating 3 out of 5]

Mastering Kubernetes is an all-directions guide to Kubernetes.

It's very rich in covering a broad range of aspects of Kubernetes - from overview, architecture, setup in different platforms, cluster hardening, CNI, writing your own plugins for networking or extending the k8s apiserver with custom resource definitions.

However with all those topics in mind, the book is very limited to what it can really cover with "mastering" and what with just a standard "up and running"-level of coverage.

In just ~430 pages the topics that are in my opinion, "mastery"-worthy are:

* architecture,
* setup in different platforms - although this is a stretch,
* security - although secrets without encryptions are just base64 text,
* CNI - there's an attempt to guide you where to start with writing your own CNI plugin, but nowadays the links that are mentioned, are dead.
* running a k8s federation,
* extending the k8s api server with custom resource definitions - however the `ThirdPartyResource` mentioned here is nowadays deprecated, but migration is covered in https://kubernetes.io/docs/tasks/acce...


Overall this is a very good book, but it needs to cover more content and be "mastery"-worthy in each topic part. Let's hope if there's a 2nd edition, it'll do better cause this here has potential.

[Eugene Bosiakov · Rating 3 out of 5]

There are zero reasons to compete with Kubernetes documentation. The official site is well-written and, by definition, is always up-to-date.

The book is trying to give a high-level understanding, but it falls into ambitious terms or too specific details in practice.

Networking and persistence are the most complex Kubernetes topics. This reading covers them in a confused manner and only made my understanding worse.

My recommendation: if you are a beginner, listen to Kubernetes authors' videos on YouTube and then start reading the official documentation.

[Michael · Rating 3 out of 5]

An adequate tutorial-in-a-book for Kubernetes. As with many Packt offerings, I would argue that the material typically remains too high-level to be "mastering" a topic and the book feels a bit padded. But, again, if you don't know Kubernetes this will give you a decent starting point - but you will have to read the official docs at some point.

[Jakub · Rating 1 out of 5]

It started ok, but that was it. After each chapter I was puzzled - that’s it? What was a meaning of it? Was the idea cut in half?

I wasted just my time :(

[Ilian Kostadinov · Rating 2 out of 5]

It's seems like a book written from pearson which doesn't have experience with teaching. Book contain a lot bla bla things. Important things are not well explained. You can receive a brief impression what kubernetes is, but not master it.

[David Zhang · Rating 4 out of 5]

There is plenty of theory. It'll be better if more practice included :)

[Ralf Pieper · Rating 4 out of 5]

Probably beyond what most people are setting up, but I might be able to make use of this in my next role. Book has examples and you can build along side.

[Bjørn Remseth]

It's ok. It's directly to the point and covers the highlights. It's what I wanted. Easily absorbed :-)