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by lbriner 1680 days ago
I would say there is no fast way to do this. If you specifically want to learn Kubernetes on GCP as opposed to DevOps generally, there are many things to learn.

Sure, you can get something basic running very quickly but if you are talking about production systems, "ramp up"? then there are many things to learn, understand and avoid and this takes an amount of time.

For an example, as a very experienced Dev and Ops person, after 18 months of Kubernetes, I am still learning things that I should have ideally done from day 1 and probably only avoided problems because I am not using it with very high traffic.

You can read lists and follow tutorials but engineering is trade-offs and even in the world of nice tooling, there are still many decisions to make and don't end up in a position where, for example, you cannot upgrade an ingress without the system becoming unavailable because you didn't consider this early on.

Don't get me wrong, it is worth learning but it is not fast.
1 comments
WFHRenaissance 1680 days ago
As someone 6 months into Kubernetes can you elaborate on some of those things you would've preferred to have done from day 1?
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lbriner 1675 days ago
* The hardening of images is pretty important: https://blog.gitguardian.com/how-to-improve-your-docker-cont...

* Working out/testing how upgrades can be made to ingresses without downtime

* Designing and testing SSL cert rotation

* Having a strategy for image version updates (e.g. not using "latest" but how to decide when an upgrade to a newer image is or isn't acceptable)

* How to super-optimise layering or image builds including ADD vs COPY, realising that copying everything at once usually breaks this, working out where/how to perform things like OS updates

* How to correctly inject build versions from CI into the docker executable

* How to use databases inside containers with e.g. schema and data updates

* The various kubernetes network options

* How DNS works in kubernetes (and when it doesn't)

* Debugging containers that fail to start or run

* Using probes correctly and understanding ready vs liveness vs startup

* How to check for node health dynamically to control external load balancers

* Using pod anti-affinity to balance pods across all nodes

* Understanding how to lof effectively from the container

Those are a few I can think of off the top of my head.

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