VSHN.timer #14: What's New, Kubernetes?

Welcome to another VSHN.timer! Every Monday, 5 links related to Kubernetes, OpenShift, CI / CD, and DevOps; all stuff coming out of our own chat system, making us think, laugh, or simply work better.
In this edition we are going to review the latest Kubernetes news, tools, and events. Hang tight, for the world of Kubernetes is advancing fast, fast, FAST! It is hard to keep up, even when watching an excellent podcast such as Kubernetes This Month. So here is our contribution, providing some signal out of all the noise.
1. Kubernetes is the current de-facto standard for cloud applications; all emerging trends in cloud technologies directly concern Kubernetes. It is then with joy that we observe the industry sharing and applying best practices around it. Let’s be honest: the most simple scenarios can still baffle many developers new to the platform: what is the best way to deploy apps in K8s? Kustomize? Helm? Individual YAML files? WKSctl? Using a UI such as those provided OpenShift 4, Rancher 2.3, or NetApp’s Kubernetes Service ? To provide an answer, this article by Colin Walker provides a great introduction to Helm when deploying apps to K8s. The author dives into Helm charts, secret management, and many other subjects. Must read.
https://itnext.io/best-practices-for-deploying-to-kubernetes-using-helm-73be1f3040d2
2. Developers new to Kubernetes must face a swath of new keywords, terminology, and buzzwords. Among those, Load Balancers, Liveness Probes, and of course, Controllers. What are Kubernetes Controllers? How do they work? How do they relate to Operators? To get answers to those questions, check out these slides by Kenta Iso. They include a simple yet effective overview of Controllers, their raison-d’être, internal structure and major characteristics. A great resource!
https://speakerdeck.com/govargo/inside-of-kubernetes-controller
3. Another common concept in the world of K8s is that of proxies. They play a critical role in any production-scale cloud native app. The standard choices these days are Envoy Proxy, HAProxy, and nginx. But which one to choose? This article by the Ambassador team provides a fantastic benchmark of those, with hard data, the information to reproduce the tests, and excellent results. Make sure to check this before you choose your proxy software.
https://www.getambassador.io/resources/envoyproxy-performance-on-k8s/
4. After all the technical considerations, let us not forget about costs. Cloud technologies can easily shrink the IT budget of an organization if left unchecked (serverless gone wild, anyone?) How to properly deal with costs when apps are deployed through Kubernetes? Tools like the AWS Cost Explorer can certainly help, but can we setup limits at the K8s level directly? Developers can set quotas, which vary from one technology stack to another. But they can also set resource requests and limits at container level, to  control their costs while at the same time ensuring appropriate performance levels. This article in the Kubecost blog provides a great introduction to resource requests and limits.
http://blog.kubecost.com/blog/requests-and-limits/
5. The tool of the week is Kontena Lens, a cross-platform desktop application (compatible with Linux, macOS and Windows) providing developers with a convenient point-and-click interface to manage clusters conveniently. For the moment, the application is in heavy development, and it is available for free, although an invitation is required to use it. Very useful!
https://www.kontena.io/
What other Kubernetes tools would you recommend? Are you deploying apps in Kubernetes? Do you have any best practices you would like to share with the community? Get in touch with us through the form at the bottom of this page, and see you next week for another edition of VSHN.timer.