Yellow Bricks

by Duncan Epping

kubernetes

Unexplored Territory #049 and #050, all about multi-cloud and cloud native workloads!

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I was working on my VMware Explore presentations so I forgot to post #049, figured I would post both at the same time for those who hadn’t seen these yet. In episode 049 we had two guests for the very first time, Gerrit Lehr and Andrea Siviero. Andrea and Gerrit talked us through the Multi-Cloud Adoption Framework and explained why customers are interested in this service and how it helps them meet their business goals. Listen to the full episode via Spotify (bit.ly/3Ny1EXE), Apple (bit.ly/449s2xA), or via the embedded player below.

Episode 050 focusses on Self-Managed Tanzu Mission Control, and we had Corey Dinkens as our guest. Corey discussed what Tanzu Mission Control is about, what the use case is, how customers are consuming it today, and why a self-managed solution makes sense for some customers compared to the SaaS offering. Interesting stuff if you ask me. Listen via Spotify (bit.ly/3XHU3dE), Apple (bit.ly/3XLm7g5), or use the embedded player below.

Announcing the Unexplored Territory Podcast!

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Announcing the Unexplored Territory Podcast!Frank, Johan, and I have been working on this for a few months already, but today I can finally share that a brand new podcast series will be out soon. This bi-weekly podcast (released on Monday) is titled “Unexplored Territory“. We will be discussing topics such as public cloud, virtualization, cloud-native applications, Kubernetes, end-user computing, storage, business continuity, and important (VMware-based) emerging technologies with industry/subject matter experts.

You may wonder, where you will be able to find it/us? Well of course we have a website: UnexploredTerritory.Tech. You can find us on Twitter on @UnexploredPod. You can listen to the podcast via any of your favorite podcast apps: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Overcast, Stitcher, Amazon Music, Stitcher, Pocket Cast. Or use the RSS Feed to add the podcast to your favorite podcast player.

Make sure to subscribe and download the episodes automatically! Our very first guest will be a very special one, we invited VMware’s brand new CTO Kit Colbert to join us, and this episode will be available on Monday the 18th of October! We created a short teaser for the podcast, you can find it in your podcast app or check it out below via the embedded player. We hope everyone will enjoy the podcast, we are looking forward to many great conversations!

Want to play around with Kubernetes? Try MicroK8s!

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Two weeks ago I wanted to play around with Kubernetes for a day or two. I found this training course internally at VMware that allowed me to go through some labs. I asked around if anyone had some tips on getting Kubernetes up and running fast. I couldn’t be bothered with creating a multi node kubernetes cluster. I wanted to play around with some of the commands and YAML files. I tried Atomic as suggested by the lab manual, but there were way too many steps involved to install/configure Kubernetes if you ask me. Next option would be some version hosted in a cloud of choice, but I didn’t want to incur the cost. After digging around I stumbled on MicroK8s. It sounded easy, so I figured I would give it a try. When it comes to Linux my preference is Ubuntu/Debian, it is just what I am most familiar with, and as MicroK8s comes from Canonical I figured I would give it a try. As Kelsey Hightower suggested on twitter yesterday (which triggered this article), it is just one command away:

I downloaded the latest Ubuntu Server ISO and I created a VMware Fusion VM. I stepped through the installation wizard of Ubuntu Server and then noticed it already provided the option even to install “microk8s”, I selected the package, and some additional packages I figured I would need, and clicked done. Literally within minutes, I had a fresh single node Kubernetes configuration, which for me worked straight out of the box!

After it is done configuring, click reboot and login. I created an alias for kubectl, as I didn’t want to type “microk8s.kubectl” every time or install a different version:

sudo snap alias microk8s.kubectl kubectl

I also enabled the Kubernetes dashboard from the get-go, which can be done by running the command “microk8s.enable dashboard“. There are a whole bunch of articles out there that can take you through the steps of deploying your first container, making it highly available by specifying the number of instances so I am not going to do that. I don’t want to pretend to be an expert, as I am far from that. Also, check the MicroK8s documentation, it is pretty decent. My colleague Myles Gray has a very good tutorial on why containers, very good read which I also recommend for people who just want to know a bit more about it like myself.