Can a deployment resource have multiple containers? - kubernetes

I am trying to deploy multiple pods in k8s like say MySQL, Mango, Redis etc
Can i create a single deployment resource for this and have multiple containers defined in template section? Is this allowed? If so, how will replication behave in this case?
Thanks
Pavan

I am trying to deploy multiple pods in k8s like say MySQL, Mango,
Redis etc
From microservices architecture perspective it is actually quite a bad idea to place all those containers in a single Pod. Keep in mind that a Pod is a smallest deployable unit that can be created and managed by Kubernetes. There are quite many good reasons you don't want to have all above mentioned services in a single Pod. Difficulties in scaling such solution is just one of them.
Can i create a single deployment resource for this and have multiple
containers defined in template section? Is this allowed? If so, how
will replication behave in this case?
No, it is not allowed in Kubernetes. As to Deployments and StatefulSets, (which you need for statefull applications such as databases) both manage Pods that are based on identical container spec so it is not possible to have a Deployment or StatefulSet consisting of different types of Pods, based on different specs.
To sum up:
Many Deployments and StatefulSets objects, serving for different purposes are the right solution.

A deployment can have multiple containers inside of it.
Generaly it's used to have one master container for the app and some sidecar container that are needed for the app. I don't have an example right now.
Still it's a best practice to split deployments for scalling purpose, your front may need to scale more than the back depending on cache and you may not want to have pods too big. For cahing purpose like redis it's better to have a cluster on the side as each time a pod start or stop, you will loose data.

It's common having multiple containers per Pod in order to share namespaces and volumes between them: take as example the Ambassador pattern that is used to present the application to outside adding a layer for the authentication, making it totally transparent to the main app.
Other examples using the sidecar pattern consist of log parsers or configurators that hot reload credentials without the main app to worry about it.
That's the theory, according to your needs you have to use one deployment per component, so a Deployment for your app, a StatefulSet for the DB and so on. Keep in mind to use a container per process and a Kubernetes resource per backing service.

Related

Run different replica count for different containers within same pod

I have a pod with 2 closely related services running as containers. I am running as a StatefulSet and have set replicas as 5. So 5 pods are created with each pod having both the containers.
Now My requirement is to have the second container run only in 1 pod. I don't want it to run in 5 pods. But my first service should still run in 5 pods.
Is there a way to define this in the deployment yaml file for Kubernetes? Please help.
a "pod" is the smallest entity that is managed by kubernetes, and one pod can contain multiple containers, but you can only specify one pod per deployment/statefulset, so there is no way to accomplish what you are asking for with only one deployment/statefulset.
however, if you want to be able to scale them independently of each other, you can create two deployments/statefulsets to accomplish this. this is imo the only way to do so.
see https://kubernetes.io/docs/concepts/workloads/pods/ for more information.
Containers are like processes,
Pods are like VMs,
and Statefulsets/Deployments are like the supervisor program controlling the VM's horizontal scaling.
The only way for your scenario is to define the second container in a new deployment's pod template, and set its replicas to 1, while keeping the old statefulset with 5 replicas.
Here are some definitions from documentations (links in the references):
Containers are technologies that allow you to package and isolate applications with their entire runtime environment—all of the files necessary to run. This makes it easy to move the contained application between environments (dev, test, production, etc.) while retaining full functionality. [1]
Pods are the smallest, most basic deployable objects in Kubernetes. A Pod represents a single instance of a running process in your cluster. Pods contain one or more containers. When a Pod runs multiple containers, the containers are managed as a single entity and share the Pod's resources. [2]
A deployment provides declarative updates for Pods and ReplicaSets. [3]
StatefulSet is the workload API object used to manage stateful applications. Manages the deployment and scaling of a set of Pods, and provides guarantees about the ordering and uniqueness of these Pods. [4]
Based on all that information - this is impossible to match your requirements using one deployment/Statefulset.
I advise you to try the idea #David Maze mentioned in a comment under your question:
If it's possible to have 4 of the main application container not having a matching same-pod support container, then they're not so "closely related" they need to run in the same pod. Run the second container in a separate Deployment/StatefulSet (also with a separate Service) and you can independently control the replica counts.
References:
Documentation about Containers
Documentation about Pods
Documentation about Deployments
Documentation about StatefulSet

Is it more resource efficient to have to Pods, or two containers in one Pod?

I have test environment where HA is not important but rather resources efficiency, so would you recommend in that regard to create one Pod with multiple containers where it make sense of course, where containers are tight coupled or to have one Pod for every service? Does this have any impact on resources at all?
I will give an example if for instance I have php application, and then nginx proxy and then filebeat service that is listening logs, what would be better to have 3 pods for this 3 things or one pod with 3 containers. And when I say better I mean to use less memory, cpu, etc.
The difference between both solutions should not be significant (negligible ?).
However, depending on your approach, the management effort might be quite significantly different.
With one component in a dedicated pod you need to somehow synchronise live cycle of all pods (php + nginx + filebeat) whenever you spin just one, new application up.
With all of them in one pod you just need to create/delete one pod.

In what case is recommended to use one pod for many containers [duplicate]

What's the benefit of having multiple containers in a pod versus having standalone containers?
If you have multiple containers in the same pod, they can speak to each other as localhost and can share mounted volumes.
If you have multiple pods of one container each, you can restart one without restarting the other. Assuming they're controlled by deployments, you can add additional replicas of one without necessarily scaling the other. If the version or some other characteristic of one of them changes, you're not forced to restart the other. You'd need to set up a service to talk from one to the other, and they can't communicate via a filesystem.
The general approach I've always seen is to always have one container per pod within a deployment, unless you have a specific reason to need an additional container. Usually this is some kind of special-purpose "sidecar" that talks to a credentials service, or manages logging, or runs a network proxy, or something else that's secondary to the main thing the pod does (and isn't a separate service in its own right).
Apart from the points pointed out , the CPU and Memory(under technical preview) are associated with a POD so if we have a single container in a POD it is easy to understand and implement the application resourcerequirement inside the POD with more than one container inside the POD we could face issues/challenges when we want to do a horizontal scale
Secondly the deployments (Blue/Green,Canary,A/B) are also more aligned with the approach of single container/POD
From the Kubernetes documentation
A Pod might encapsulate an application composed of multiple co-located containers that are tightly coupled and need to share resources. These co-located containers might form a single cohesive unit of service–one container serving files from a shared volume to the public, while a separate “sidecar” container refreshes or updates those files. The Pod wraps these containers and storage resources together as a single manageable entity.

How pod replicas sync with each other - Kubernetes?

I have a MySQL database pod with 3 replicas.Now I'm making some changes in one pod(pod data,not pod configuration), say I'm adding a table.How will the change reflect on the other replicas of the pod?
I'm using kubernetes v1.13 with 3 worker nodes.
PODs do not sync. Think of them as independend processes.
If you want a clustered MySQL installation, the Kubernetes docs describe how to do this by using a StatefulSet: https://kubernetes.io/docs/tasks/run-application/run-replicated-stateful-application/#deploy-mysql
In essence you have to configure master/slave instances of MySQL yourself.
Pods are independent from each other, if you modify one pod the others will not be affected
As per your configuration - changes applied in one pod wont be reflected on all others. These are isolated resources.
There is a good practice to deploy such things using PersistentVolumeClaims and StatefulSets.
You can always find explanation with examples and best practices in Run a Replicated Stateful Application documentation.
If you have three mysql server pods, then you have 3 independent databases. Even though you created them from the same Deployment. So, depending on what you do, you might end up with bunch of databases in the cluster.
I would create 1 mysql pod, with persistence, so if one pod dies, the next one would take if from where the other one left. Would not lose data.
If what you want is high availability, or failover replica, you would need to manage it on your own.
Generally speaking, K8s should not be used for storage purposes.
You are good to have common storage among those 3 pods (PVC) and also consider STS when running databases on k8s.

Kubernetes best practices in pods

As I have been using kubernetes more I keep on seeing the reference that a pod can contain 1 container or more and I have even looked at examples.
My question is whether there is a case where this would be best practice and more efficient to create multi container pods since you can scale and replicate your pods coupling it with a service.
Thanks in advance
A Pod can contain multiple containers, but for the most portion of the situations, it makes perfect sense for the Pod to be simply an abstraction over a single running container.
In what situations does it make sense to have a multi-container deployed Pod?
What comes to my mind are the scenarios where you have a primary Pod running, but you need to tightly couple helper processes, such as a log watcher. In those situations, it makes perfect sense to actually have multiple containers running inside a single pod.
Another big example that comes to my mind is from the Istio project, which is a platform made to connect, manage and secure microservices and is generally referred as a Service Mesh.
A huge part of what it does and is able to accomplish to provide a greater control and customization over the deployed microservices network, is due to the fact that it deploys a sidecar proxy, denominated Envoy, throughout the environment intercepting all network communication between microservices.
Here, you can check an example of load balancing in a Istio service mesh. As you can see the Proxy is deployed inside the Pod, intercepting all communication that goes through it.