Installing Kubernetes

What do I need?

To get started with Kubernetes, determine your Kubernetes tool and installation type. In summary, there are two main options for running Kubernetes:

1. A Learning Environment Installation: It is known as the localhost installation. This installation type only requires a single workstation. Use Minikube or Kubernetes in Docker to deploy a single Kubernetes cluster.
2. A Production Environment Installation: This is where you need to make infrastructure-related decisions on where Kubernetes runs. You can install on-premise, hosted in the cloud, on VMs, or bare-metal.

If you are learning Kubernetes installing MiniKube or Kubernetes in Docker is all you need to get started. If you are looking to do a production environment installation, read on for the available Kubernetes solutions, and Kubernetes installation tools and resources. 

What are the Kubernetes Solutions available?

Click here for all the tools that belong to the Kubernetes ecosystem https://kubernetes.io/docs/setup/#learning-environment. Here is a summary provided the Introduction to Kubernetes training course(Chapter 5):

Hosted Solutions
With Hosted Solutions, any given software is completely managed by the provider. The user pays hosting and management charges. Some of the vendors providing hosted solutions for Kubernetes are:

• Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE)
• Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)
• Amazon Elastic Container Service for Kubernetes (EKS)
• DigitalOcean Kubernetes
• OpenShift Dedicated
• Platform9
• IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service.

Turnkey Cloud Solutions
Below are only a few of the Turnkey Cloud Solutions, to install Kubernetes with just a few commands on an underlying IaaS platform, such as:

• Google Compute Engine (GCE)
• Amazon AWS (AWS EC2)
• Microsoft Azure (AKS).

Turnkey On-Premise Solutions
The On-Premise Solutions install Kubernetes on secure internal private clouds with just a few commands:

• GKE On-Prem by Google Cloud
• IBM Cloud Private
• OpenShift Container Platform by Red Hat.

What are the Kubernetes Installation Tools and Resources?

To accelerate a Kubernetes installation you can leverage a few tools depending on your environment. Here is a summary from the LinuxFoundation’s training course on Kubernetes Installation Tools/Resources:

kubeadm
kubeadm is a secure and recommended way to bootstrap a minimum viable and secure Kubernetes cluster. 

kops
Stands for Kubernetes Operations, or kops. Kops can create, destroy, upgrade, and maintain production-grade, highly-available Kubernetes clusters from the command line. AWS is officially supported by kops. See the kops project for more details on support.

You may also build Kubernetes from scratch via the Kubernetes GitHub: https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/tree/master/build

Or view the project on GitHub Kubernetes The Hard Way, which shares the manual steps involved in bootstrapping a Kubernetes cluster.

Why should I use Kubernetes configuration options?

Use the Kubernetes installation options to find a Kubernetes solution that fits your use case. Whether you are just starting, learning, experimenting, or delivering with Kubernetes, there are solutions and content to support your journey. In this post, we discussed:

• Kubernetes configuration options,
• Infrastructure considerations before installing Kubernetes,
• Infrastructure choices for a Kubernetes deployment,
• And Kubernetes installation tools and resources.

If you’d like to continue learning, Kubernetes read the next post on Creating Containerized Services on Kubernetes.