Kubernetes Operations (kOps) Project

What is Kubernetes Operations (kOps)?

If you visit the Kubernetes Operations (kops) project on GitHub, the first sentence you’ll read is that it is “The easiest way to get a production-grade Kubernetes cluster up and running.” This sentence is accurate only if we exclude Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE). We prefer kOps since it provides a good level of simplicity without taking away the control of the process. It allows us to tweak the cluster more than we would be permitted with hosted solutions. It is entirely open source, can be stored in version control, and is not designed to lock us into a vendor.

Creating a Kubernetes cluster in AWS

If your hosting vendor is AWS, kOps is, in our opinion, the best way to create a Kubernetes cluster. Whether that’s true for GCE is open for debate since GKE works great. We can expect kOps to be extended in the future to other vendors.

We’ll use kOps to create a Kubernetes cluster in AWS. Don’t worry if you’ve chosen to run Kubernetes somewhere else… Almost all Kubernetes clusters follow the same principles, even though the methods of setting them up might differ. The principles are what truly matters, and we are confident that, once you set it up successfully on AWS, you’ll be able to transfer that knowledge anywhere else.

Why AWS?

The reason for choosing AWS lies in its adoption. It is the hosting vendor with the biggest user base. If we had to place a blind bet on your choice, it would be AWS solely because that is statistically the most likely choice. We cannot, unfortunately, explore all the options for hosting vendors in a single chapter. If we were to go through all hosting vendors and different projects that might help with the installation, we’d need to dedicate a whole course for that.

Why should we use kOps?

kOps lets us create a production-grade Kubernetes cluster. This means we can use it not only to create a cluster but also to upgrade it (without downtime), update it, or destroy it if we don’t need it anymore. A cluster cannot be called “production-grade” unless it is highly available and fault- tolerant. We should be able to execute it entirely from the command line if we want it to be automated. These few features make kOps a great choice.

kOps follows the same philosophy as Kubernetes. We create a set of JSON or YAML objects, which are sent to controllers that create a cluster.

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We’ll discuss what kOps can and cannot do in more detail soon. For now, in the next lesson, we’ll move to the hands-on part of this chapter and ensure that all the prerequisites for the installation are set.