Hey folks! I recently got my hands dirty by building a simple app that increments counters using Redis pods, all deployed locally with Kubernetes and Minikube. I utilized a Deployment to scale my HTTP servers, a StatefulSet for the Redis pods with persistent volumes, and a NodePort Service for app accessibility (albeit I had to tunnel via Minikube to reach the HTTP endpoints with Postman). My main goal was to practice core Kubernetes concepts before starting my summer internship.
Now, I'm eager for my next project! I'm looking for ideas to help me deepen my understanding of Kubernetes, especially concepts that are beneficial in production settings. While I feel pretty comfortable with basic tasks like writing Dockerfiles and configuring YAML files, I want to move beyond that and gain practical expertise. Any suggestions for projects or insights based on real-world experiences would be greatly appreciated!
5 Answers
Why not try kubeadm with Strimzi to set up a Kafka cluster with replication? It’s excellent for understanding distributed messaging and resilience, plus it ties in nicely with Kubernetes storage and scaling concepts.
Explore a hands-free cluster setup! Implement an initial deployment with tools like metallb, cert-manager, and argocd. This way, after the initial setup, you can push things to Git and have them deployed automatically with ingress and valid SSL certificates—very practical for real-world scenarios!
If you want to go deeper into Kubernetes itself, you might consider building your own Kubernetes cluster from scratch on multiple Linux machines. This helps you understand the core components and configurations. Alternatively, dive into monitoring stacks like kube-prometheus or consider scalability under heavy usage for a more application-focused project.
How about setting up a WordPress installation? You could practice by creating a Horizontal Pod Autoscaler (HPA) with basic metrics and see how to make it scale. Once you've done that, try using custom metrics to scale based on ingress metrics like queue length and response times—great for learning how to handle load!
Consider deploying a monitoring solution like Prometheus. You can scrape metrics from your HTTP servers, even if they’re fake metrics you cook up. It’ll give you practice exposing a frontend via ingress, and trying out tools like cert-manager and network policies across namespaces could boost your skills too.
Don't forget to experiment with load testing to see how your app behaves under pressure; it’ll teach you a lot about breaking points!