Kubernetes and DevOps An Effective Pair
Published: 2022-11-15 13:37:00


Kubernetes is used in DevOps for performing automation on complex applications, micro-services, and cloud-native applications. DevOps utilizes Kubernetes for the successful performance of enterprises depending on how well the workflow processes enhanced with automation and scaling that are primarily running in the production environment. Before how Kubernetes supports DevOps performance in this blog, let us discuss briefly fundamental DevOps.

**Enterprise DevOps**
In the traditional systems before DevOps, single-discipline teams were followed each team with independent goals, processes, rules, and tooling. It leads to many conflicts between teams that caused inefficiencies and bottlenecks. It also generates a counterproductive environment for customers to the bottom line. It is possible to resolve these issues when DevOps is applied perfectly with the appropriate tool and this is achieved by implementing cultural changes to make processes and overflows that are overlapping and executed in tandem. But these changes will not enough to address the challenges that exist in the development environment.

DevOps is utilizing pipelines to address these technical problems along with incorporating a version control system used by developers and automation and configurations that are framed by operational members. The integrated toolchains enable seamless submission, revision of code, and testing. The single set of tooling assures alignment of processes instead of completion. Pipelines will be introduced with careful planning that is visibility into the entire SDLC (Software Development Lifecycle) to make them easier for teams to address issues early by identifying them. Automation tools will start restricting the teams by making adjustments for moving DevOps to the cloud. Kubernetes is appropriate for assisting infrastructure transition to public clouds.

What is the role of containers for Enterprise-Scale CI/CD?

A pipeline is used to help improve the agility and products of enterprises but most of the pipelines are assembled from a range of independent tools that require customized plug-ins or inefficient workarounds for the integration process. The tools will be working together with the specialization needed for each tool resulting in the toolchains becoming worthless. Each time an individual component needs replacement or updates, the entire pipeline has to be redesigned. This solution to the limitations is containerization.

DevOps teams using containerization for breaking down their toolchains into microservices. Every tool or individual functionality will be separated into a modular piece that can be able to execute independently of the platform. This makes it simple for the teams to change out tools without disrupting other pipelines. For example, if a testing tool needs a particular host configuration, the teams will not be limited to that same configuration for all tools. It allows DevOps teams to choose the best tools for the specified requirements and offers freedom to scale or reconfigure as per the requirement. The downside of containers is they are complicated to manage. A platform such as Kubernetes is required to run the containers.

**Kubernetes for DevOps**
The number of traits and capabilities offered by Kubernetes is useful for developing, deploying, and scaling enterprise-standard DevOps pipelines. It enables teams to automate the manual processes that are involved in orchestration. Every team looking for increasing productivity and quality will get highly benefited from this type of automation. Following are the uses of Kubernetes in DevOps

**Infrastructure and configuration as code**
On-demand Infrastructure
Cross-functional collaboration
Zero-downtime deployments
Infrastructure and configuration as code

Kubernetes enables the construction of infrastructure as code and every part of the applications and tools includes ports, access controls, and databases that can be made available to Kubernetes. Environment configurations as code can be managed easily. For every team a new platform requires to be deployed; a source repository consists of config files that can be offered to Kubernetes instead of executing the script. In addition, version control systems will manage code-like applications in development and making it easier for teams to define and edit infrastructure and configurations and allowing them to push changes to Kubernetes for automatic file handling.

**On-demand Infrastructure**
Kubernetes offers wonderful service catalog to enable the creation of infrastructure on-demand by developers. It includes cloud services like AWS resources that are shown through open-service and API standards. They depend on the configurations that are enabled by operations members to assure consistency of security and compatibility.

**Cross-functional Collaboration**
The granular controls will be managed when Kubernetes is used to orchestrate a pipeline. It allows a user to enable a particular application or role to take appropriate actions while others can’t. For example, customers will be restricted to deploy or review processes and testers to develop the pending approvals. This kind of control enables smooth and continuous collaboration along with ensuring consistency in configuring the resources. It has control over the deployment and scale of pipeline resources that help in ensuring the budgets are maintained to reduce security risks with Kubernetes.

**Zero-downtime Deployments**
The automated rollback features and rolling updates of Kubernetes enable the deployment of new releases with zero downtime. Kubernetes will be used to move traffic over available services that are updating the clusters one by one instead of taking down production environments and redeploying the updated ones. They help to achieve green/blue deployments easily along with prioritizing new features for customers and conducting A/B testing on the product features. The underlying objective is used to release software quickly while DevOps focuses to improve the entire SDLC. DevOps pipelines depend heavily on communication, integration, collaboration, and automation to ensure faster software deployment. Microservices and containers help in driving up the development speed by making possible updates on a small scale. It allows software updates with minimal or zeroes downtime. But, dealing with enterprise-standard systems with a lot of containers becomes a problem during containerization management.

**Why Kubernetes?**
Kubernetes was focused to address the issues primarily that developers face in an agile environment and automating processes for a continuous and seamless workflow. Kubernetes is suitable for executing a CI/CD pipeline in a DevOps culture. Following are the reasons for Kubernetes is popular as the top container orchestration platform for implementing enterprise-scale DevOps processes.

**Flexibility of Pods**
The pods are small units that run on the container in a Kubernetes environment. Many containers that are run using a single pod will result in better utilization of resources. The flexibility of pods allows developers to execute containers that provide additional services or features with the main app. Due to the use of maximum resources by flexible pods, routing, load balancing, and other features that are completely separated from the app functionalities and microservices.

**Reliability**
Reliability is the main component that makes Kubernetes perfect for CI/CD (Continuous Integration / Continuous Deployment) processes. Kubernetes contains a series of health-check features that omit numerous issues related to deploying a new iteration. It will be crashed frequently and implements Kubernetes simple with built-in auto-healing features during the new pod deployment. The improvements in the robust reliability of a Kubernetes tool will be achieved with the help of two approaches liveness check and readiness check. Both are used to check the health of applications and to protect one pod from bringing down the complete system. They provide warnings if the newly updated pods are malfunctioning and update them accordingly.

**Rollbacks and Updates**
Adding up new pods is well-suited for the CI/CD workflow in a Kubernetes environment. The existing pods will not be replaced in these cases. They are updating features in the Kube deployment object to not cause any impact to the end-user. The traffic is directed to a new pod by a service later. The rolling back to a previous version is simple as it is stored in the version control system in case of the update fails to function.

**The connection between DevOps and Kubernetes**
Kubernetes is important for DevOps teams who are looking to automate, scale and build resiliency into the applications while minimalizing the infrastructure risks. Following are the major reasons to prove why Kubernetes is important for the DevOps team.
DevOps team can deploy everywhere

Hybrid facilities with on-premises or cloud nature deployment
Open standards that increase flexibility

Immutability that can be stopped, redeployed, or restarted
Recap of Kubernetes and DevOps combination

Kubernetes enables organizations to run applications within containers in a distributed manner and it also handles scaling, resiliency, and availability throughout the deployment of applications. Kubernetes provides

**Load balancing**
Access to storage (persistent and non-persistent)
Service discovery
Automated rollouts, upgrades, and rollbacks
Role-based access control (RABC)
Security controls for executing applications within the platform
Extensibility to leverage a growing and large ecosystem that requires DevOps culture
Continuous integrity, continuous deployment, and continuous delivery

**Conclusion**
Kubernetes and DevOps are a perfect match for deploying applications and services to customers faster. The relationship between the DevOps culture and the container organization with the Kubernetes tool is an effective and efficient one. It means that the teams don’t have to develop resiliency, scale, etc into the application and they should trust that Kubernetes is used to build a platform that is highly secure and flexible to enable organizations to offer their customer faster and reliably. Learn the [Best DevOps Training in Chennai](https://www.softlogicsys.in/devops-training-and-certification-in-chennai/) at Softlogic to gain expertise in containerization for automation.