Production Kubernetes: Building Successful Application Platforms

by Josh Rosso, Rich Lander, Alex Brand

Kubernetes has become the dominant container orchestrator, but many organizations that have recently adopted this system are still struggling to run actual production workloads. In this practical book, four software engineers from VMware bring their shared experiences running Kubernetes in production and provide insight on key challenges and best practices. The brilliance of Kubernetes is how configurable and extensible the system is, from pluggable runtimes to storage integrations. For platform engineers, software developers, infosec, network engineers, storage engineers, and others, this book examines how the path to success with Kubernetes involves a variety of technology, pattern, and abstraction considerations. With this book, you

Genres: Technology, Computer Science, Software, Technical, Reference

506 pages, Paperback

Published April 20, 2021

Reviews

[Sebastian Gebski · Rating 5 out of 5]

A nearly perfect book about Kubernetes.

What should you know about it?
1. It's not a book for people who start with Kubernetes.
2. It's not a book aimed to help you pass CKA/CKAD.
3. It's not a book you read chapter by chapter, more like a compendium - you want to read up on secrets/auto-scaling/observability/operators/... - pick a corresponding chapter and enjoy the ride.
4. The level of detail is very satisfying, descriptions are clear and comprehensible - obviously, the book can't cover everything, but the author did a good job by finding an ideal compromise between going too shallow and overwhelming the reader with too many details
5. What I missed was some sort of a conceptual "map" of Kubernetes entities - some sort of an overview with concepts and the "concerns" they cover. Without it, I felt that I need to "reshuffle" my way of thinking occasionally (once I've read about something that was completely new for me)

Good stuff, but not for beginners.

[Hrishikesh · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a well-written, opinionated book that you would want to read if you are responsible for running, deploying and managing Kubernetes clusters. There is a lot of information in here - covering almost all operational aspects of Kubernetes. The icing on the cake is the platform angle that the authors bring in each chapter. Information and presentation-wise, this book is good.

When it comes to advice and best practices though, take things with a pinch of salt. There are places where the authors assert that they have "not seen this pattern being used so much". After I ran into this for 2-3 patterns that I have found myself using because no size fits all, I began wondering whether these assertions were more of a going with the herd syndrome. After all, the authors have extensive experience in the field. The references to OpenShift as the sole example were also unnecessary.

[Emil Petersen · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an excellent overview of most, if not all, of the problems that need to be dealt with when deploying and building Kubernetes clusters. This is directly relevant to what I currently do at work, so I have had much use of the contents.

[Gonzalo Fernández-Victorio · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've seen comments from other people. Definitely not a book for people new to Kubernetes. But if you have some experience working with K8s and you want a book that helps you understand more and improve your knowledge with best practices, this is your book.
Highly recommended.

[Karol Szczepański · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is really good in terms of getting you thinking like an actual operator/developer of a platform based on Kubernetes that is supposed to serve for production traffic. The authors outline the different challenges that need to be solved on the platform level, outline the possible solutions and disscuss how they differ, which one is more suitable and why. I think this book is really valuable for both people with no experience with running Kubernetes in production and looking to understand the challenges that need to be faced as well as people who have actual experience and are looking to improve their abilities in making informed decisions about picking the right tools/solutions for the challenges.

[Max Wolffe · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great overview of more advanced Kubernetes features, along with some best practice recommendations from folks who have seen many many Kubernetes deployments (presumably both successful and unsuccessful). Pretty much exactly what I was looking for / expecting from the book.

Recommend for folks working on their company's K8s platform.

[Tomas Dabašinskas · Rating 5 out of 5]

A must-read for any Platform Engineer. I really liked that it's quite opinionated - it doesn't just cover general Kubernetes concepts but also gives clear recommendations and best practices. Definitely one of the better books on the topic.