Introduction
Writing and delivering software is a bit of an art. There are numerous programming languages out there to choose from. Some of which determine the hosting platform you must use to run the complied code on. Moreover, there are programming patterns, styles, Do’s and Don’t Do’s, which every programmer has at their disposal. All these patterns and best practices are optional of course. However, what matters at the end of the day is compiled, bundled, packaged, and running software.
This document looks at the operational aspect of writing software. But what does it mean? Well, in other words, I won’t be telling you how to write clean software here. In fact, I cover that in my other document dirtydozen where I expose 12 most common code mistakes which programmes tend to make.
Guidance in this document can be used to organise your development teams and help deliver your software faster. You will learn how to provision, manage, and run modern infrastructure and discover architectural patterns aimed at helping you deliver software fast and at scale. And what technology is better suited to deliver that other than Kubernetes - plus a sprinkle of Docker with a hint of Helm added for a good measure. Tasty!
Background
This document has been put together as result of an exciting learning journey which started with Docker addiction. It then quickly evolved into a spiral of container orchestration episodes involving Docker Swarm and ultimately Kubernetes. Finally, Helm Charts came in to provide that one-click packaging and software delivery mechanism making these modern technologies combined an extremely powerful cocktail.
Why kube-guide? Reason is that along this discovery and learning journey I came across several architectural paradigms, methodologies, models, approaches and themes. There isn’t a prescribed way of delivering software end-to-end that one could simply follow - like an instruction manual.
Hence, I argued earlier that tech these days is a bit of an art. What this document is aiming to deliver is a plain overview of an end-to-end Container & Kubernetes powered solution which worked out very well in several software product implementations.
The following 12 chapters are easy to digest instructions to inspire you to start your Journey to Production with Kubernetes.
Who should read this document?
Mainly tech enthusiasts responsible for writing and delivering software solutions. CTOs, software architects, infrastructure architects and team leads responsible for delivering long term vision in software engineering space.