Search
Find a bite, explore a topic or look for a role.
Results for “Kubernetes”
Bites 384
Egress Gateway: Control Your Mesh's Outbound Traffic
An Egress Gateway is a monitored exit door for all outbound traffic from your service mesh. Use it to enforce security on external calls, like restricting domains or originating mTLS.
Service Mesh Authorization: A Bouncer for Your Microservices
A service mesh authorization policy is a bouncer for your microservices. It moves access control from your app to the mesh, checking service identity and request details like HTTP method and path. Use it for fine-grained, Zero Trust security.
Traffic Splitting: Route Live Traffic Between Service Versions
Traffic splitting directs percentages of live user traffic to different versions of a service. It's key for canary releases, letting you test new code on a small user group before a full rollout.
Mutual TLS (mTLS): When Services Need to Trust Each Other
mTLS is a two-way ID check for services. Both parties exchange certificates to prove their identity before communicating. Service meshes like Istio use it to secure traffic between microservices.
Service Mesh Ingress: The Doorkeeper for Your Mesh
A Service Mesh Ingress Gateway is the dedicated entry point for external traffic into your mesh. It lets you apply advanced routing, security, and observability policies at the boundary, like TLS termination or traffic splitting.
The Sidecar Pattern: Your App's Helper Container
The Sidecar pattern attaches a helper container to your main application, like a sidecar on a motorcycle. It handles peripheral tasks like logging or networking, letting you add features without changing the app's code.
Control Plane vs. Data Plane: The Brain and the Brawn
Think of a system as having a brain and a body. The Control Plane is the brain, making decisions and setting rules. The Data Plane is the body, executing those rules on actual data or traffic, like in a service mesh's network of proxies.
kubectl Treats Custom Resources Like Native Ones
kubectl interacts with Custom Resources (CRs) using the same commands you know for built-in types like Pods. Once a CRD is installed, you can kubectl get, describe, and delete its objects.
Flux Image Update Automation: Closing the GitOps Loop
Flux's image update automation acts like a bot that watches your container registry. It finds new image tags that match your policies (like semver) and automatically commits the change back to your Git repository, triggering a deployment.
Argo CD Sync Phases and Waves: Ordering Your Deployments
Argo CD Sync Phases and Waves are a recipe for ordering deployments. Use them for complex apps where a database migration must run pre-sync. The footgun: a single failed resource in a wave halts the entire sync process, making it brittle if overused.
Configuration Drift: When Live State Betrays Git
Configuration drift is when your live system's state no longer matches its Git source of truth. GitOps tools like Argo CD detect this by constantly comparing live resources to Git, flagging any discrepancies.
OpenTelemetry
OpenTelemetry is a CNCF standard for generating, collecting and exporting traces, metrics and logs from your services using one vendor neutral set of APIs and SDKs, so you can switch observability backends without rewriting instrumentation code.
cAdvisor: A Task Manager for Containers
cAdvisor is like a task manager for your containers, giving you a live view of their resource usage. It's used to track performance, historical usage, and network stats for every container on a host.
The Three Pillars of Observability
Observability isn't one tool; it's a three-legged stool of metrics, logs, and traces. Metrics give the 'what' (CPU is high), logs the 'why' (an error loop), and traces the 'where' (which service is slow). The footgun is treating them as separate silos.
K8s Authentication: Proving Who You Are to the API Server
The K8s API Server is a vault door; authentication is proving your identity to the guard. It tries a chain of methods—like OIDC for users or tokens for pods—until one succeeds. The footgun: unauthenticated requests become system:anonymous, a major risk.
Pod Security Standards: A Security Checklist for Pods
Pod Security Standards are a built-in security checklist for your pods. You apply a level (Restricted, Baseline, Privileged) to a namespace to prevent risky configurations like running as root.
Pod Security Context: Set Security Rules for Pods
A Pod Security Context defines security settings for all containers in a Pod, like setting permissions for a user group before adding users. Use it to enforce non-root execution or manage shared volume permissions.
Node Affinity: Tell Your Pods Where to Go
Node affinity is like giving pods a 'preferred seating' list for nodes. You guide the scheduler to nodes with specific labels, like those with GPUs or in a certain zone. The footgun is confusing 'required' (a hard rule) with 'preferred' (a suggestion).
PersistentVolumeClaim: How Pods Request Storage
A PersistentVolumeClaim (PVC) is a request for storage, like a claim check for a storage locker. Pods use it to mount durable storage for databases or file uploads. The footgun: a PVC is just a request; a matching PersistentVolume must exist to fulfill it.
Projected Volumes: Mount Config as Live Files
A projected volume mounts ConfigMaps and Secrets as files inside your Pod, which update automatically when the source object changes. Use this for apps that can hot-reload config, avoiding restarts. The footgun: updates aren't instant; there's a delay.