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Managing Kubernetes: Operating Kubernetes Clusters in the Real World
While Kubernetes has greatly simplified the task of deploying containerized applications, managing this orchestration framework on a daily basis can still be a complex undertaking. With this practical book, site reliability and DevOps engineers will learn how to build, operate, manage, and upgrade a Kubernetes cluster―whether it resides on cloud infrastructure or on-premises. Brendan Burns, cofounder of Kubernetes, and Craig Tracey, staff field engineer at Heptio, dissect how Kubernetes works internally and demonstrate ways to maintain, adjust, and improve the cluster to suit your particular use case. You’ll learn how to make architectural choices for designing a cluster, managing access control, monitoring and alerting, and upgrading Kubernetes. Dive in and discover how to take full advantage of this orchestration framework’s capabilities.
188 pages, Paperback
Published December 4, 2018
37 people are currently reading
130 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
October 13, 2018
tl;dr Overall the book is a solid 3.5/5 in my opinion. It summarizes available information well, but brings very little new to the table. If you haven't read that much Kubernetes resources, the book is going to be great for you although it takes a while to get straight to the point. The newer parts are the last chapters about "Disaster Recovery" and "Extending Kubernetes", which are not so well explored to this date.
I'm a bit biased and tired of reading the introduction to Kubernetes and the basics of Kubernetes in every book about Kubernetes, so this is one of the downside in my opinion.
If we skip past this, it's a good summary of the kind of messy documentation about Kubernetes. It's certainly better than what it was in 2015-2016, but there's still to be desired. The book does a good summary of the most basic stuff like - which components operate in Kubernetes master and agent nodes.
The start of "Installing Kubernetes" goes into the "grey" area of picking a Kubernetes installation method. This is again a summary of the Kubernetes documentation which by the way, is great in this regard. Setting up a Kubernetes cluster in the book picks "kubeadm" (the Kubernetes operator setup tool) as a tool of choice for setting up the cluster. However funnily enough, the kubeadm configuration definition uses the v1alpha1 config definition, and just yesterday I've updated our internal Kubernetes environment setup utility to v1alpha3, since v1alpha1 and v1alpha2 will be removed by Kubernetes 1.13 (was few weeks ago as of written date of the review, scheduled for 1.12, but later postponed). So note that the kubeadm configuration is not going to work.
The later parts of Monitoring are also pretty much common to monitoring and very well known from other Kubernetes resources, not much to say there.
"Disaster Recovery". At this point of the book, it's already known that the certificates, admin kubeconfig and etcd are the main things to backup and recover. What's not that much known is that Kubernetes has a lot of static IPs in the certificates and cluster components configurations that also must be taken care of when recovering. (read more at ). The PodSecurityPolicy mention (that I did not research before this book) is a good example how to limit the bad `hostPath` usage of volumes that also need to be manually backed up. Making your life easier by not allowing this in the first place is the right way to go. However it is important to take into consideration the storage provisioner you're using. Although limiting the usage of `hostPath` in the PODs sounds like it solves the problem, if your storage provisioner itself stores the persistent volumes on the host - you have to take backup of them.
And finally - "Extending Kubernetes". Another topic that's also very popular, but not so well documented by the Kubernetes docs. The book does a good summary of what the various approaches towards extending Kubernetes are. I personally don't take into consideration API extensions that much when architecting systems, but the book does a good job of categorizing, explaining the pros and cons of different approaches. It gave me a new perspective of the possible use cases.
I'm a bit biased and tired of reading the introduction to Kubernetes and the basics of Kubernetes in every book about Kubernetes, so this is one of the downside in my opinion.
If we skip past this, it's a good summary of the kind of messy documentation about Kubernetes. It's certainly better than what it was in 2015-2016, but there's still to be desired. The book does a good summary of the most basic stuff like - which components operate in Kubernetes master and agent nodes.
The start of "Installing Kubernetes" goes into the "grey" area of picking a Kubernetes installation method. This is again a summary of the Kubernetes documentation which by the way, is great in this regard. Setting up a Kubernetes cluster in the book picks "kubeadm" (the Kubernetes operator setup tool) as a tool of choice for setting up the cluster. However funnily enough, the kubeadm configuration definition uses the v1alpha1 config definition, and just yesterday I've updated our internal Kubernetes environment setup utility to v1alpha3, since v1alpha1 and v1alpha2 will be removed by Kubernetes 1.13 (was few weeks ago as of written date of the review, scheduled for 1.12, but later postponed). So note that the kubeadm configuration is not going to work.
The later parts of Monitoring are also pretty much common to monitoring and very well known from other Kubernetes resources, not much to say there.
"Disaster Recovery". At this point of the book, it's already known that the certificates, admin kubeconfig and etcd are the main things to backup and recover. What's not that much known is that Kubernetes has a lot of static IPs in the certificates and cluster components configurations that also must be taken care of when recovering. (read more at ). The PodSecurityPolicy mention (that I did not research before this book) is a good example how to limit the bad `hostPath` usage of volumes that also need to be manually backed up. Making your life easier by not allowing this in the first place is the right way to go. However it is important to take into consideration the storage provisioner you're using. Although limiting the usage of `hostPath` in the PODs sounds like it solves the problem, if your storage provisioner itself stores the persistent volumes on the host - you have to take backup of them.
And finally - "Extending Kubernetes". Another topic that's also very popular, but not so well documented by the Kubernetes docs. The book does a good summary of what the various approaches towards extending Kubernetes are. I personally don't take into consideration API extensions that much when architecting systems, but the book does a good job of categorizing, explaining the pros and cons of different approaches. It gave me a new perspective of the possible use cases.
June 7, 2020
This is tl;dr kind of book. If you don't want to read Kubernetes docs or a few blog posts, this book will give you a birds-eye overview of Kubernetes. Short, without going into details, just a few keywords.
If you took this book to learn how to manage the cluster, put it down and return if you can. This book is like 100 level. Few sentences for each keyword with references to docs. Not sure for who this book is for... For sure not for ops, drops or devs.
If you took this book to learn how to manage the cluster, put it down and return if you can. This book is like 100 level. Few sentences for each keyword with references to docs. Not sure for who this book is for... For sure not for ops, drops or devs.
October 24, 2018
This book is what the title says. A book on how to manage Kubernetes.
I quite liked it. Probably because it came at the perfect time in my learning curve. It put all the random pieces (RBAC, CNI, CRD to name a few) in place and gave it a better perspective for them.
However, it lacks depth (probably because part of it is environment dependant). For example, I would have liked a better discussion on how to use labels.
Nonetheless, I think it is well worth a reading if you're more than a novice and are interested in the topic of administration.
I quite liked it. Probably because it came at the perfect time in my learning curve. It put all the random pieces (RBAC, CNI, CRD to name a few) in place and gave it a better perspective for them.
However, it lacks depth (probably because part of it is environment dependant). For example, I would have liked a better discussion on how to use labels.
Nonetheless, I think it is well worth a reading if you're more than a novice and are interested in the topic of administration.
January 10, 2019
Cursory: A good introduction to Kubernetes Management
If you read Kubernetes: Up and Running, or Mastering Kubernetes, or Kubernetes Cookbook, they're mostly written from the user perspective. But they don't stop to explain the Kubernetes architecture and how all its pieces fit together. This book is just for that. The most obscure aspects a beginner should know about, you'll find them in this book. It's not very detailed, it still has a lot of typos and it's examples sometimes fall short, but if you're more on the Ops side of things, there's no better book than this one out there.
If you read Kubernetes: Up and Running, or Mastering Kubernetes, or Kubernetes Cookbook, they're mostly written from the user perspective. But they don't stop to explain the Kubernetes architecture and how all its pieces fit together. This book is just for that. The most obscure aspects a beginner should know about, you'll find them in this book. It's not very detailed, it still has a lot of typos and it's examples sometimes fall short, but if you're more on the Ops side of things, there's no better book than this one out there.
November 24, 2018
What a phenomenal book! Hitting just the right spot for people that are starting out with Kubernetes but also "day 2" people as well, the book manages to explain past the basic "pod" concepts but without getting tangled into deep complexity. It was a pleasure to read (although it is a technical book) and helped me understand a lot of what goes on behind the scenes. Fully recommend to anyone looking into kubernetes.
May 10, 2019
Good overview of the whole shebang. Could have used some more lists of optional parts or links to same.
June 7, 2019
I don't know if I will manage a cluster, but this is a good resource to do so, even if you won't, good to know how that works.
August 10, 2019
Comprehensive overview of Kubernetes design, concepts, operation and some key examples anyone learning can make immediate use of.
November 30, 2019
Good coverage of key ideas for understanding and working with kubernetes.
November 18, 2020
For me this book was a good starter. Looks like I don't learn enough about a certain topic, when I just read blog posts. This book explains enough internal thing to understand what k8s is about, how to get started and how to progress afterwards.
I'd recommend it for a head start into the topic and then go on further with more technical books.
I'd recommend it for a head start into the topic and then go on further with more technical books.
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