swarm

What is Container Orchestration – Kubernetes Version?

In a previous post, What is Container Orchestration?, I explained container orchestration using some examples based on Docker Swarm. While Docker Swarm is undeniably easier to both use and explain, Kubernetes is by far the most prevalent container orchestrator today. So, I’m going to go through the same examples from that previous post but, this time, use Kubernetes. One of the great things about Docker Enterprise is it supports both Swarm and Kubernetes so I didn’t have to change my infrastructure at all.

What is Container Orchestration?

Over the last two or three years I’ve given a similar presentation on containers to operations groups at clients, potential clients, conferences and meetups. Generally, they’re just getting started with containers and are wondering what orchestration is and how it impacts them. In this post, I will talk about what container orchestration is and provide several videos with simple examples of what it means.

The Power in a Name

My full name is Mark Allen Miller. You can find my profile on LinkedIn under my full name https://www.linkedin.com/in/markallenmiller/. I went to college with two other Mark Millers. One of them also had the same middle initial as me so my name is not the most unique name in the world. My dad’s name is Siegfried Miller. At the age of 18, because he could “change the world”, he changed his last name from Mueller to Miller and yep, he doesn’t have a middle name. My grandfather’s name is Karl Mueller. His Austrian surname, prior to immigrating to the US in 1950, was Müller with an umlaut which is a mark ( ¨ ) used over a vowel to indicate a different vowel quality. Interesting trivia you might say, but what does this have to do with Docker?

Well, Docker originally had the name dotCloud. According to wikipedia “Docker represents an evolution of dotCloud’s proprietary technology, which is itself built on earlier open-source projects such as Cloudlets.” I had never even heard of Cloudlets until I wrote this blog.

Docker containers have names also. These names give us humans something a little more interesting to work with instead of the typical container id such as 648f7f486b24. The name of a container can be used to identify a running instance of an image, but it can also be used in most commands in place of the container id.

Deploying a Docker stack file as a Kubernetes workload

Overview

Recently I’ve been hosting workshops for a customer who is exploring migrating from Docker Swarm orchestration to Kubernetes orchestration. The customer is currently using Docker EE (Enterprise Edition) 2.1, and plans to continue using that platform, just leveraging Kubernetes rather than Swarm. There are a number of advantages to continuing to use Docker EE including:

  • Pre-installed Kubernetes.
  • Group (team) and user management, including corporate LDAP integration.
  • Using the Docker UCP client bundle to configure both your Kubernetes and Docker client environment.
  • Availability of an on-premises registry (DTR) that includes advanced features such image scanning and image promotion.

I had already conducted a workshop on deploying applications as Docker services in stack files (compose files deployed as Docker stacks), demonstrating self-healing replicated applications, service discovery and the ability to publish ports externally using the Docker ingress network. …

Interlock Service Clusters

The Single-Cluster architecture utilizes a single Docker Swarm cluster with multiple collections to separate the dev, test, and prod worker machines and combined with RBAC it enforces work load isolation of applications across the various runtime environments. Applications deployed to this Single-Cluster can utilize the Interlock reverse proxy capabilities of SSL termination and path based routing. This single Interlock application supports all three collections and the routing of application traffic.

In this article I will show you how to configure Interlock to run in a multi-service-cluster configuration which gains you isolation and dedication of Interlock Proxy instances to each of the dev, test, and prod collections.

Create a Kubernetes User Sandbox in Docker Enterprise

When you create a user in Docker Enterprise Edition (EE), that user can immediately create a Swarm service on the cluster. All they need to do is generate, download, unzip and “execute” their client bundle. However, on the Kubernetes side Role Based Access Control (RBAC) and the default user permissions are quite a bit different. I will show you how to get a similar experience with Kubernetes that you get with the out-of-the-box experience of Swarm.