By Nilesh Deo, Director of Product Marketing, CloudBolt

Kubernetes has been talked about ad nauseum lately, yet all the talk hasn't necessarily resulted in widespread enterprise adoption. 

But we know it's bound to happen, because developers love the concept of containers expediting the deployment of applications. In fact, according to Gartner, by 2023, over 70% of global organizations will be running more than two containerized applications in production, up from less than 20% in 2019.

Developers need speed to meet the innovation demands of today's businesses. In other words, they need to focus on coding. It's easy enough to create applications using containers, but managing containers as their number scales into the hundreds and thousands can become very difficult for any IT organization.

Kubernetes is the nirvana for developers because it enables faster management and delivery of containerized applications, so more of their time can be spent innovating and solving problems. It's a scalable technology that brings innovation to market faster. 

Kubernetes simplifies, if you can simplify its deployment

There is a reason Kubernetes is great in theory, yet not quite mainstream. Running a simple search on "deploying Kubernetes" can bring up Reddit threads from anxiety-ridden developers going bonkers trying to figure out how to roll out the technology. (In fact, one such discussion even bluntly asks, ‘How the heck does anyone get anything done in Kubernetes?')

For enterprises, deploying multi-node Kubernetes clusters is a manual process, which means it's also time-consuming and error-prone. And as the number of applications scales, most teams simply don't have enough time, let alone the resources with the right skill sets, to do so.

Additionally, while developers want to deploy applications directly into Kubernetes clusters for efficiency's sake, this also isn't an easy task. Provisioning can take a long time and it complicates the entire application management lifecycle and process.

Make Kubernetes cluster deployment a repeatable process

Blueprints that can be utilized for automatic, repeatable processes are a necessity for fast deployment, especially if your team lacks a sufficient amount of time, resources, or Kubernetes skills. Blueprints also ensure that there won't be misconfiguration. Organizations should be able to use blueprints to first define a cluster size, then deploy the multi-node Kubernetes clusters using these blueprints at the destination of choice (i.e, private or public clouds).

Blueprints get the ball rolling for Kubernetes deployment so that, once the clusters are ready, applications can also be deployed into them directly. Because the process is repeatable, the blueprints should also be used to test new versions of the containerized applications in an easier fashion.

Ease up on the deployment, but not on the controls

Of course with automation comes great responsibility. Keeping the Kubernetes environment secure is just as important as securing  the rest of an organization's IT infrastructure.

In order to make your Kubernetes and container environment safer, always implement role-based access controls to ensure that only authorized users have access to the environments they need. Establish team accountability by creating approval workflows, and add restrictions that allow cluster deployment to only certain environments - for example, test or on-prem - by default. After deployment, organizations should also ensure that users have access to the right layer. For example, giving cluster-wide access to everyone in the company is going to set up application development for potential disaster.

Additionally, monitor the Kubernetes environment on a continual basis. One method is by setting policies to monitor, alert and log security events as soon as they occur. It also can't be stated strongly enough that additional security measures such as closing all important ports need to be proactively layered on top of this monitoring.

Easing the fears of DevOps teams everywhere

Using Kubernetes is daunting on the surface: If it wasn't, there wouldn't be articles and discussions in the InfoWorlds and Reddits of the world on how complexity could kill Kubernetes or delay its rollout in organizations.

Through repeatable processes using blueprints, and putting the right controls in place once those processes are established, developers can reap the benefits of Kubernetes while being able to innovate and bring products to market faster.

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About the Author

 

Nilesh Deo is Director of Product Marketing at CloudBolt Software, provider of the leading self-service hybrid cloud management platform. Before CloudBolt, he worked at VMware marketing their CloudHealth platform. Nilesh enjoys learning about new technologies that are transforming organizations.