How to ensure accessibility of pod - kubernetes

I want to create a deployment with the name nginx-dns which uses nginx image. I want ensure that the service and pod are accessible via their respective DNS records.
kubectl expose deployment nginx-dns --name=nginx-dns ...
or
kubectl expose pod nginx-dns-12234 --name=nginx-dns ...
Which command is better to use to ensure accessibility of pod ?

The fist command exposes a deployment and second one pod. It's always recommended to use deployment over a pod directly. A deployment is a higher level abstraction and is better from no downtime upgrade, rollout/rollback, availability and reliability perspective.
Refer to the use cases of a deployment here

Deployment are easier in terms of future upgrade to your application pod. and easier to manage and recommended as best practices. Using deployment you just have to change the deployment file and rest will get updated. if you don't want to use deployment then imagine managing 100 pods and making update on them one by one is difficult and not feasible task. so hence you should always opt Deployment over Pod directly. There are plenty of other advantages of using deployment.
For more info use the docs https://kubernetes.io/docs/concepts/workloads/controllers/deployment/

Related

Is it possible to configure Kubernetes to deploy services in a specific order?

I have 3 services that are based on the same image, they're basically running the same app in 3 different configurations. 1 service is responsible for running migrations and data updates which the other 2 services will need. So I need this 1 service to be deployed first before the other 2 will be deployed. Is there any way to do this?
I assume that the two services which are dependent on service 1 are either Pod, Deployment or ReplicaSet. So, make use of Init Containers.
Here is an example that will make a pod wait until the dependent services are up and running. busybox is most common image used for init containers that supports variety of linux commands that will help you check the status of dependent services.
I would look for a solution outside of Kubernetes.
Assuming that you have a release pipeline to deploy the changes, you could have a step to migrate and update the database. If the migration step succeeds, then deploy all the new services.
If you really have to use K8S, see the InitContainers doc.
In flux there is an option to define the sequence of applications to be deployed.
With spec.dependsOn you can specify that the execution of a Kustomization follows another. When you add "dependsOn" entries to a Kustomization, that Kustomization is applied only after all of its dependencies are ready.
You can add under the spec of kustomization
spec:
dependsOn:
- name: dependency-kustomization

Replace the image on one pod manually, while other pods uses the main image

Let's say I have 10 pods running a stable version, and I wish to replace the image of one of them to run a newer version before a full rollout.
Is there a way to do that?
Not as such: every pod managed by a Deployment is expected to be identical, including running the same image. You can't change a pod's image once it's been created, and if you change the Deployment's image, it will try to recreate all of its managed pods.
If the only thing you're worried about is the pod starting up, the default behavior of a deployment is to start 25% of its specified replicas with the new image. The old pods will continue running uninterrupted until the new replicas successfully start and pass their readiness checks. If the new pods immediately go into CrashLoopBackOff state, the old pods will still be running.
If you want to start a pod specifically as a canary deployment, you can create a second Deployment to handle that. You'll need to include some label on the pods (for instance, canary: 'true') where you can distinguish the canary from main pods. This would be present in the pod spec, and in the deployment selector, but it would not be present in the corresponding Service selector: the Service matches both canary and non-canary pods. If this runs successfully then you can remove the canary Deployment and update the image on the main Deployment.
Like the other answer mentioned, It sounds like you are talking about a canary deployment. You can do this with Kubernetes and also with Istio. I prefer Istio as it gives you some great control over traffic weighting. I.e you could send 1% of traffic to the canary and 99% to the control. Great for testing in production. It also lets you route using HTTP headers.
https://istio.io/latest/blog/2017/0.1-canary/
If you want to do it with k8s just create two deployments with unique deployment names (myappv1 & myappv2 for example) with the same app= label. Then you can just create a service with the selector = whatever your app label is. The svc will round robin between the two v1 and v2 deployments.

kubernetes - kubectl run vs create and apply

I'm just getting started with kubernetes and setting up a cluster on AWS using kops. In many of the examples I read (and try), there will be commands like:
kubectl run my-app --image=mycompany/myapp:latest --replicas=1 --port=8080
kubectl expose deployment my=app --port=80 --type=LoadBalancer
This seems to do several things behind the scenes, and I can view the manifest files created using kubectl edit deployment, and so forth However, i see many examples where people are creating the manifest files by hand, and using commands like kubectl create -f or kubectl apply -f
Am I correct in assuming that both approaches accomplish the same goals, but that by creating the manifest files yourself, you have a finer grain of control?
Would I then have to be creating Service, ReplicationController, and Pod specs myself?
Lastly, if you create the manifest files yourself, how do people generally structure their projects as far as storing these files? Are they simply in a directory alongside the project they are deploying?
The fundamental question is how to apply all of the K8s objects into the k8s cluster. There are several ways to do this job.
Using Generators (Run, Expose)
Using Imperative way (Create)
Using Declarative way (Apply)
All of the above ways have a different purpose and simplicity. For instance, If you want to check quickly whether the container is working as you desired then you might use Generators .
If you want to version control the k8s object then it's better to use declarative way which helps us to determine the accuracy of data in k8s objects.
Deployment, ReplicaSet and Pods are different layers which solve different problems.All of these concepts provide flexibility to k8s.
Pods: It makes sure that related containers are together and provide efficiency.
ReplicaSet: It makes sure that k8s cluster has desirable replicas of the pods
Deployment: It makes sure that you can have different version of Pods and provide the capability to rollback to the previous version
Lastly, It depends on use case how you want to use these concepts or methodology. It's not about which is good or which is bad.
There is a little more nuance to the difference between apply and create than what is already mentioned here. Kubectl create can be used imperatively on the command line or declaratively against a manifest file.
Kubectl apply is used declaratively against a manifest file. You can't use kubectl apply imperatively.
One key difference is when you already have an object and you want to update something. Even if you used a manifest file with kubectl create, you will get an error when you use kubectl create again to update the same resource. But, if you use kubectl apply, you will not get an error. It will update the resource without any issues.
So, the convention is to use kubectl apply to create AND update resources, kubectl create is used to create resources, and kubectl run is used to create a pod with a specific image, namespace, etc. for experimentation and testing with the --dry-run=client option.

Kubernetes rolling update vs set image

After some intense google and SO search i couldn't find any document that mentions both rolling update and set image, and can stress the difference between the two.
Can anyone shed light? When would I rather use either of those?
EDIT: It's worth mentioning that i'm already working with deployments (rather than replication controller directly) and that I'm using yaml configuration files. It would also be nice to know if there's a way to perform any of those using configuration files rather than direct commands.
In older k8s versions the ReplicationController was the only resource to manage a group of replicated pods. To update the pods of a ReplicationController you use kubectl rolling-update.
Later, k8s introduced the Deployment which manages ReplicaSet resources. The Deployment could be updated via kubectl set image.
Working with Deployment resources (as you already do) is the preferred way. I guess the ReplicationController and its rolling-update command are mainly still there for backward compatibility.
UPDATE: As mentioned in the comments:
To update a Deployment I used kubectl patch as it could also change things like adding new env vars whereas kubectl set image is rather limited and can only change the image version. Also note, that patch can be applied to all k8s resources and is not restricted to be used with a Deployment.
Later, I shifted my deployment processes to use helm - a really neat and k8s native package management tool. Can highly recommend to have a look at it.

Is there the concept of uploading a Deployment without causing pods to start?

(I am (all things considered) a Kubernetes rookie.)
I know that kubectl create -f myDeployment.yaml will send my deployment specification off to the cluster to be reified, and if it says to start three replicas of its contained pod template then Kubernetes will set about starting up three pods.
I wonder: is there a Kubernetes concept or practice of somehow uploading the deployment for reference later and then "activating" it later? Perhaps by, say, changing replicas from zero to some positive number? If this is not a meaningful question, or this isn't the Right Way To Think About Things, I'd appreciate pointers as well.
I don't think you idea would work well with Kubernetes. Firstly, there so no way of "pausing" a Deployment or any other ReplicationController or ReplicaSet, besides setting the replicas to 0, as you mentioned.
The next issue is, that the YAML you would get from the apiserver isn't the same as you created. The controller manager adds some annotations, default values and statuses. So it would be hard to verify the Deployment that way.
IMO a better way to verify Deployments is to add them to a version control system and peer-review the YAML files. Then you can create or update is on the apiserver with kubectl apply -f myDeployment.yaml. If the Deployment is wrong in term of syntax, then kubectl will complain about it and you could patch the Deployment accordingly. This also simplifies the update procedure of Deployments.
Deployment can be paused, please refer https://kubernetes.io/docs/user-guide/deployments/#pausing-and-resuming-a-deployment , or see information with kubectl rollout pause -h.
You can adjust replicas of a paused deployment, but changes on pod template will not trigger a rollout. If the deployment is paused in the middle of a rollout, then it will not continue until you resume it.