[Estimated Reading Time: 10 minutes] In the previous post we installed the Kubernetes Dashboard and saw how we could access the dashboard service which itself runs in the Kubernetes cluster. We also saw how clunky that was and I promised a better way, which we turn to now.
[Estimated Reading Time: 13 minutes] At the end of the previous post in this series, we reached the point where I had my Kubernetes cluster up and running, including a Dashboard service. As I mentioned, this Dashboard is not part of a default installation. Taking a look at how I got this up and running provides a handy introduction to some further Kubernetes concepts. So let’s get into it.
[Estimated Reading Time: 10 minutes] Following the Vagrant experiment (reminding me of a Bill Bailey metaphor… “a long walk down a windy beach to a cafe that was closed“) I next set about automating my VM creation using PowerShell, with greater success. Though still not perfect, the final gap to full automation is something I could close, if I wished. And we get to install kubernetes itself!
[Estimated Reading Time: 8 minutes] The first significant practical step in establishing my Bare Metal Kubernetes cluster was to provision 4 VM’s. At this point it is worth mentioning that actually installing Kubernetes is almost trivial once you have the necessary hardware in place. Since my ‘hardware’ was going to be virtual, this meant that provisioning the VM’s was by far the biggest job so after an initial manual install, so I set about automating as much of this process as I could.
[Estimated Reading Time: 8 minutes] I set myself a new challenge for the New Year: Stand Up a Kubernetes cluster of my own. At home. I have reasons (long term costs being [potentially] lower than cloud-hosted alternatives being just one of them) but honestly since Kubernetes is a dominant presence in my day-to-day work these days, the main reason was that I was curious to learn more about it, and this seemed like a good way to do that.
