A Giraffe Taught me Kubernetes!
OK, great. I have your attention.
Now let me take you back a year, before I met said giraffe. I distinctly remember asking my now manager “doesn’t it worry you that I don’t know anything about Kubernetes?” as I was interviewing for a position labeled Cloud and DevOps Engineer. Bold strategy on my part, but hey, thanks for the hire Brian 😉.
Needless to say, the past year I’ve been Googling. Lots of Googling.
This may sound familiar. You’ve been told your company is going through a digital transformation and with that come requirements to learn Kubernetes. Now you find yourself quickly trying to cram all the Kubernetes knowledge possible into your seemingly tiny brain while remaining credible to your team members? Yeah, same.
Fortunately for you, I’m a self-proclaimed professional studier. I was one of those nerds academics that loved school and tests. In an effort to save you some time, I’ve aggregated what I learned throughout this process. Take this guide as your cliff notes version of “How to learn Kubernetes”.
Stage 1: What is Kubernetes?
That was my first search, verbatim. A solid attempt, I do say.
That brought me to the official Kubernetes documentation. This is an incredible reference and one you should bookmark. There are definitions, diagrams, tutorials, all of the things you need to be successful with Kubernetes. If you follow the link, you’ll see a quick definition…
Kubernetes is a portable, extensible, open-source platform for managing containerized workloads and services, that facilitates both declarative configuration and automation.
… followed by pages of explanation regarding whatever this mumbo jumbo is trying to say. It’s too much too soon in my opinion. Smaller words next time, please. Enter Phippy the Giraffe.
Pictures! Yes, a picture book explaining Kubernetes! I would like a virtual high 5 please, because I know this is exactly what you were looking for. Don’t want to read? There’s a narrated version of the book as well. No excuses!
To loosely summarize this fine piece of literature, a giraffe named Phippy meets a whale who convinces her to live in a box (container). She got lonely in the box and needs to interact with the outside world. That’s when she meets Captain Kube who suggests she move her box into a pod on his ship. Phippy sails the seas learning more Kubernetes concepts, making new friends, and lives happily ever after. For anyone new to Kubernetes, this really is a great introduction. Did I mention there are pictures?
From Phippy’s adventure, we start to understand What is Kubernetes? Yes, it’s a Greek word meaning ship captain, but moreover, it’s an orchestration system for containers. It helps with managing, deploying and scaling giraffes (applications) once isolated in boxes (containers).
Albeit the simplicity of the story, we learn several important concepts, including:
- Containers
- Pods
- Replication Controllers
- Services
- Volumes
- Namespaces
If you have a basic understanding of this list, you are ready to move forward in your learning.
Stage 2: You kind of get it, what’s next?
Now that some of these words are less scary, it’s time to dive deeper. This is where you pick a training course, book, blog, YouTube video, podcast, whatever makes sense to you, in order to really gain an understanding of Kubernetes.
Personally, I took training courses through both Cloud Academy and Microsoft as my main avenues of learning. Microsoft offers loads of free training, but I found their “Introduction to Kubernetes” course may be the best introductory Kubernetes resource I’ve seen. Here at SAS, we are fortunate all employees have access to Cloud Academy licenses that I happily took advantage of. Alternatively, there are many other online training resources you can utilize such as Udemy, Linux Academy, and A Cloud Guru. The list goes on, and fair warning, some may cost money.
Other favorite resources include:
- The KubePark Blog - This is the coolest Kubernetes analogy I’ve seen. Or maybe I’m just dreaming of theme parks being open…
- Kubernetes for the Absolute Beginners – A YouTube playlist from KodeKloud that is quite thorough but easily digestible
- Learn Kubernetes from the Beginning – This one is a thorough blog that is gives hands on experience. It is a step up from some of the other conceptual training, but hands on is what’s next, so dive on in!
- Overview of Container Technology: A Quick Introduction to All Things Containers – A soup to nuts video tutorial covering container basics all the way to monitoring with Prometheus.
- Introduction to Containers w/ Docker, Kubernetes & OpenShift – This is an online course offered on Coursera. Choose the Audit option when signing up and it’s free. There are a few limitations with the free version.
In the end, we all learn differently. Make your best judgement on what type of training speaks to you, but I highly recommend taking the time to explore something more in depth.
Stage 3: Enough chit chat, you want to get your hands dirty.
Now, I fully anticipate there are two types of people reading this article. The first is probably quite like me and is nervous about this section. The second, probably jumped straight here and avoided my repartee. Regardless, here we are. It’s time to get your hands dirty.
The first thing I would do is find that scary really helpful Kubernetes documentation and click into the “Getting Started” section. Go through the Installing Kubernetes with Minikube steps and try the tutorials. This will give you a feel of everything you have hopefully already learned. Keep perusing the documentation and try out some of the capabilities yourself.
From there, let’s take it a step further. Search for Kubernetes in Katacoda and try out one of the many browser-based labs they offer. I have a secret for you. I’ve been holding this in for a while now… Katacoda is the #1 thing you should do if you want to learn Kubernetes. Like really learn. Not just theoretically learn.
Glad that’s off my chest. But really, I cannot speak highly enough for Katacoda.
Once you’ve gotten some hands-on experience, you should be feeling pretty good about your relationship with Kubernetes.
Stage 4: Cool, but why does SAS care about Kubernetes?
If you haven’t heard already, the next version of SAS Viya is fully containerized. This is an entirely new architecture than any previous release of Viya, using smaller microservices and utilizing dozens of containers. Managing these workloads requires an orchestration engine, helping to automate deployments and dynamically scale. Kubernetes is industry standard for container orchestration and is SAS’ chosen route.
While the initial release of the next version of Viya is intended for “cloud ready” customers, all future releases will keep this same containerized architecture. This is excellent for customers who are already on the cloud and are embracing their digital transformation. This strategy enables continuous delivery of software and updates when they are ready, rather than waiting for discrete points throughout the year. This will fundamentally transform the customer experience for SAS.
I’m willing to bet this isn’t the first time you've heard someone spat off these buzzwords “Kubernetes, Containers, CI/CD… blah blah blah”. Maybe it was in relation to SAS, maybe it wasn’t. That being said, if your company is like most, they are at least talking about Kubernetes. It’s time to join in the conversation when these words are thrown around.
Playing devil’s advocate, you could alternatively become the team expert on Kubernetes. Channel Leonardo DiCaprio in Titanic…
Stage 5: Be an Expert, or not.
As with anything in life, you have options. By no means am I saying you must follow the route I took. I could very easily insert a quote from Robert Frost here, but I’ll spare you the eye roll. Nevertheless, choose the path that works for you.
Kubernetes is an innovative, emerging technology enabling us to move faster. Take some time to learn it. You don’t need to be an expert. By utilizing some of these resources I’ve laid out and I’m sure you’ll find learning Kubernetes is much less daunting than it seems. Worst case, you’re learning a way to throw around some big techie words. You’ll be the life of your Zoom happy hours, I’m sure.
Article image credits
https://www.cncf.io/the-childrens-illustrated-guide-to-kubernetes
https://media.giphy.com/media/3o6EhZHDSQe9Bi4LYs/source.gif
