What is Container Orchestration and K8s & Architecture?

Introduction:

Containerization is gaining traction across nearly all industries and company sizes worldwide. The 2019 edition of Portworx’s annual Containers Adoption Survey report showed over 87% of surveyed organizations were using container technologies. Over 90% of them use containerization in production.

In 2021, the Kubernetes Adoption Report showed 68% of surveyed IT professionals increased their adoption of containers during the pandemic. Among their goals were speeding up deployment cycles, increasing automation, reducing IT costs, and developing and testing artificial intelligence (AI) apps and models.

What role do container technologies play in this? This blog will cover what containers are and how container orchestration works. We’ll also discuss container orchestration benefits and some of the challenges.

This blog will cover what containers are and how container orchestration works. We’ll also discuss container orchestration benefits and some of the challenges.

Outline:

1.What is Kubernetes?

Kubernetes is an open-source container orchestration tool that allows you to manage and deploy your containers in a simple, scalable way. It is written in Go and uses a command-line interface. And also, it provides many features for managing containers, including deployment, scaling, and load balancing. Kubernetes, also known as k8s, was developed by Google, and now it is maintained by the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF).

2.What is Container Orchestration?

Container orchestration is the process of managing many containers in a way that ensures they all run at their best. This can be done through container orchestration tools such as Kubernetes, Docker Swarm, and Mesos. The software programs automatically manage and monitor a set of containers on a single machine or across multiple machines.

Container orchestration tools provide an easy way to create, update and remove applications without worrying about the underlying infrastructure; this makes them ideal for use in DevOps teams working on projects involving large numbers of microservices. And these microservices make it easier to orchestrate services, including deployment, networking, storage, and security.

3.Features of Kubernetes

Here are some of the key features that make Kubernetes an ideal choice for large-scale deployments:

Self-healing: Kubernetes automatically detects and replaces failed containers, ensuring that your applications are always up and running.
Horizontal scaling: Kubernetes makes it easy to scale your application by adding or removing containers as needed.
Service discovery and load balancing: Kubernetes can automatically expose your services to the outside world and load balance traffic between containers.
Rollbacks: Kubernetes can automatically roll back changes to your application if something goes wrong.
Secured by default: Kubernetes uses Role-Based Access Control to ensure that only authenticated users can access your cluster.
Flexible deployment options: Kubernetes can be deployed on-premises, in the cloud, or a hybrid environment.
Scalability: Kubernetes makes it easy to scale your applications up or down, depending on your needs.
Rich set of APIs: Kubernetes provides a rich set of APIs that can be used to manage your applications.
Extensibility: Kubernetes can be extended to support custom deployments and workloads.
If you’re looking for a powerful and easy-to-use container orchestration system, Kubernetes is a great choice.

4.What is Kubernetes Architecture?

Kubernetes Architecture follows a client-server architecture. A node is a physical or virtual machine on which Kubernetes is installed and launches the containers. But what if the node where your application was operating goes down? The application will go down. As a result, you’ll require more than one node. A cluster is a set of grouped nodes.
So, even if one node crashes, your application is still accessible from the remaining nodes. So, having more than one node help in sharing the load as well. You will now require something to manage and monitor your cluster. This is where the control plane, or the master node, comes into play. It’s another node with Kubernetes installed and set up as a master. The master node watches over the worker nodes in the cluster, and it is responsible for the actual orchestration of containers on the worker nodes. Thus, a Kubernetes cluster consists of at least one worker node that can run pods and a control plane to manage the worker nodes.

5.Kubernetes Components

As discussed earlier, a Kubernetes cluster consists of two main components – Control Plane or Master Node and Worker Nodes. Now, these components themselves consist of different components.
The image below depicts the different components of a Kubernetes cluster.

Now, let us discuss these components in detail.
**Control Plane or Master Node Components**
The control plane or master node manages the cluster’s state. The control plane makes important decisions about the cluster and responds to the cluster events, such as starting a new pod when required.
The major components that comprise the control plane are – the API server, the scheduler, the controller manager, the etcd, and an optional cloud controller manager.
·        **API server:** The front end of the control plane exposes the Kubernetes API. It validates all internal and external requests and processes them. When you use the kubectl command-line interface, you basically interact with the Kube-API server through REST calls. The Kube-API server scales horizontally by deploying more instances.
·        **etcd:** The etcd is a consistent distributed key-value data store and the single source of truth about the status of the cluster. It is fault-tolerant and holds the configuration data and information about the state of the cluster.
·        **scheduler:** It is the responsibility of the kube-scheduler to schedule the pods on the different nodes considering the resource utilization and availability. The scheduler knows the total resources available and thus schedules the pods on the best fit node. It makes sure that none of the nodes in the cluster is overloaded.
·        **controller-manager:** The controller-manager is a group of all the controller processes that keep running in the background to control and manage the state of the cluster. It is the controller-manager that makes the changes in the cluster to make sure the current state matches the desired state.
·        **cloud-controller-manager:** The cloud-controller-manager helps you link your cluster with the cloud providers’ API in a cloud environment. You don’t have a cloud-controller-manager in a local setup where you install minikube.

**Worker Node Components**
The Kubernetes Worker nodes are where your applications are actually deployed and run. Each Worker node runs a number of different pods, which are individual containers that make up your application.
The major components that comprise the Worker node are – the kubelet, the kube-proxy, the container-runtime, and pods.
·        **kubelet:** The kubelet runs on each node to ensure that the containers are running in the pods and are healthy. A set of PodSpecs is provided to the kubelet through various techniques to ensure that pods are running as per the PodSpecs.
·        **kube-proxy:** Each worker node has a proxy service called kube-proxy that manages individual host subnetting and makes services available to the outside world. It performs request forwarding across the multiple isolated networks in a cluster to the appropriate pods/containers.
·        **container-runtime:** The container runtime is the software responsible for running the containers. Kubernetes supports Open Container Initiative-compliant runtimes such as Docker, containerd, and CRI-O.
·        **Pod:** Pods are the smallest unit in Kubernetes. A Pod is a single instance of a running process in a cluster.

As you can see, Kubernetes is made up of a number of different components. Each of these components plays an important role in the platform. By understanding the components, you can easily deploy and manage your applications on a Kubernetes cluster.

6.What are the Benefits of Container Orchestration?

If you’re looking to streamline the process of managing and deploying your containers, container orchestration is the way to go. Using a container orchestration tool, you can automate many tasks associated with managing containers, including deployment, scaling, and monitoring.
There are many benefits to using container orchestration, including:

Simplified Management
Increased Efficiency
Reduced Costs
Increased flexibility
Let’s take a closer look at each of these benefits:

1. Simplified Management

One of the biggest benefits of container orchestration is that it simplifies the process of managing containers. With orchestration tools, you can automate many tasks associated with managing containers, including deployment, scaling, and monitoring. This can free up a lot of your time so that you can focus on other tasks.

2. Increased Efficiency

Another benefit of container orchestration is that it can increase the efficiency of your container deployments. By using an orchestration tool, you can automate the process of deploying and scaling your containers. This can help you save time and ensure that your deployments are always successful.

3. Reduced Costs

Another benefit of container orchestration is that it can help reduce the costs associated with managing containers. Using an orchestration tool, you can automate many tasks related to managing containers. This can help you save money on labour costs and ensure that your deployments are always successful.

4. Increased flexibility

Finally, container orchestration can also increase the flexibility of your container deployments. Using an orchestration tool, you can easily deploy and scale your containers in response to changing demands.

7.What are some of the challenges of Container Orchestration?

There are many challenges that come with container orchestration, especially when dealing with a large number of containers.

One of the biggest challenges is ensuring that all containers are properly managed and monitored. This can be daunting, especially if you’re not using a tool like Kubernetes.
Another challenge is dealing with storage. When dealing with many containers, you need to have a good storage solution in place. This can be a challenge, especially if you’re working with a cloud provider that doesn’t offer a lot of storage options.
Finally, you need to make sure that your containers are properly secured. This is a challenge because you need to ensure that all of your containers are properly isolated from each other. This can be not easy, especially if you’re not using a tool like Kubernetes.

Fortunately, there are a number of tools and techniques that can help you overcome these challenges. With the right tools and approach, container orchestration can be a powerful tool for managing your applications.

Summary:

This blog showed you the benefits of Jenkins Automation Testing and how to set up Jenkins for automation testing using JUnit plugin. This blog also explained the common issues and solutions when setting up Jenkins for automation testing and how you troubleshoot and fix problems with Jenkins-run automated tests.