Kubernetes - Overview and Introduction to Pods ============================================== In this section we give an overview of the Kubernetes system and introduce the first major Kubernetes abstraction, the Pod. After going through this module, the student should be able to: * Connect to the class Kubernetes cluster and issue basic commands using ``kubectl``. * Describe a Kubernetes pod in a yaml file and use ``kubectl`` to deploy the pod to the cluster. * Retrieve details about the pod including status and logs. * Use labels to organize pods deployed to the Kubernetes cluster. Kubernetes Overview ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Kubernetes (k8s) is itself a distributed system of software components that run a cluster of one or more machines (physical computers or virtual machines). Each machine in a k8s cluster is either a "manager" or a "worker" node. Users communicate with k8s by making requests to its API. The following steps outline how Kubernetes works at a high level: 1) Requests to k8s API describe the user's *desired state* on the cluster; for example, the desire that 3 containers of a certain image are running. 2) The k8s API schedules new containers to run on one or more worker nodes. 3) After the containers are started, the Kubernetes deployment controller, installed on each worker node, monitors the containers on the node. 4) The k8s components, including the API and the deployment controllers, maintain both the *desired state* and the *actual state* in a distributed database. The components continuously coordinate together to make the actual state converge to the desired state. .. figure:: ./images/k8s_overview.png :width: 1000px :align: center .. note:: It is important to note that most of the time, the k8s API as well as the worker nodes are running on separate machines from the machine we use to interact with k8s (i.e., make API requests to it). The machine we use to interact with k8s only needs to have the k8s client tools installed, and in fact, as the k9s API is available over HTTP, we don't strictly speaking require the tools -- we could use curl or some other http client -- but the tools make interacting with the API much easier. Connecting to the TACC Kubernetes Instance ------------------------------------------ In this class, we will use a Kubernetes cluster running at TACC that we have created for use in this class for deploying our applications. To simplify the process of accessing the Kubernetes cluster, we have enabled connectivity to it from the ips02 host. Therefore, any time you want to work with k8s, simply SSH to isp02 with your TACC username as you have throughout the semester and then ssh to ``coe332-k8s.tacc.cloud``: .. code-block:: console [laptop] $ ssh @isp02.tacc.utexas.edu [isp02] $ ssh @coe332-k8s.tacc.cloud .. note:: The COE 332 kubernetes cluster is not available on the public internet for security reasons. You must first SSH to isp02 before ssh'ing to coe332-k8s.tacc.cloud. First Commands with k8s ----------------------- We will use the Kubernetes Command Line Interface (CLI) referred to as "kubectl" (pronounced "Kube control") to make requests to the Kubernetes API. We could use any HTTP client, including a command-line client such as curl, but ``kubectl`` simplifies the process of formatting requests. The ``kubectl`` software should already be installed and configured to use the Freetail K8s cluster. Let's verify that is the case by running the following: .. code-block:: console $ kubectl version -o yaml You should see output similar to the following: .. code-block:: console clientVersion: buildDate: "2022-03-16T15:58:47Z" compiler: gc gitCommit: c285e781331a3785a7f436042c65c5641ce8a9e9 gitTreeState: clean gitVersion: v1.23.5 goVersion: go1.17.8 major: "1" minor: "23" platform: linux/amd64 serverVersion: buildDate: "2022-02-16T12:32:02Z" compiler: gc gitCommit: e6c093d87ea4cbb530a7b2ae91e54c0842d8308a gitTreeState: clean gitVersion: v1.23.4 goVersion: go1.17.7 major: "1" minor: "23" platform: linux/amd64 This command made an API request to the TACC k8s cluster and returned information about the version of k8s running there (under ``serverVersion``) as well as the version of the ``kubectl`` that we are running (under ``clientVersion``). .. note:: The output of the ``kubectl`` command was yaml because we used the ``-o yaml`` flag. We could have asked for the output to be formatted in json with ``-o json``. The ``-o`` flag is widely available on ``kubectl`` commands. Introduction to Pods ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Pods are a fundamental abstraction within Kubernetes and are the most basic unit of computing that can be deployed onto the cluster. A pod can be thought of as generalizing the notion of a container: a pod contains one or more containers that are tightly coupled and need to be scheduled together, on the same computer, with access to a shared file system and a shared network address. .. note:: By far, the majority pods you will meet in the wild, including the ones used in this course, will only include one container. A pod with multiple containers can be thought of as an "advanced" use case. Hello, Kubernetes ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ To begin, we will define a pod with one container. As we will do with all the resources we want to create in k8s, we will describe our pod in a yaml file. Create a file called ``pod-basic.yml``, open it up in an editor and paste the following code in: .. code-block:: yaml --- apiVersion: v1 kind: Pod metadata: name: hello spec: containers: - name: hello image: ubuntu:18.04 command: ['sh', '-c', 'echo "Hello, Kubernetes!" && sleep 3600'] Let's break this down. The top four attributes are common to all k8s resource descriptions: * ``apiVersion`` -- describes what version of the k8s API we are working in. We are using ``v1``. * ``kind`` -- tells k8s what kind of resource we are describing, in this case a ``Pod``. * ``metadata`` -- in general, this is additional information about the resource we are describing that doesn't pertain to its operation. Here, we are giving our pod a ``name``, ``hello``. * ``spec`` -- This is where the actual description of the resource begins. The contents of this stanza vary depending on the ``kind`` of resource you are creating. We go into more details on this in the next section. .. warning:: Only one Kubernetes object of a specific ``kind`` can have a given ``name`` at a time. If you define a second pod with the same name you will overwrite the first pod. This is true of all the different types of k8s objects we will be creating. The Pod Spec ~~~~~~~~~~~~ In k8s, you describe resources you want to create or update using a ``spec``. The required and optional parameters available depend on the ``kind`` of resource you are describing. The pod spec we defined looked like this: .. code-block:: yaml spec: containers: - name: hello image: ubuntu:18.04 command: ['sh', '-c', 'echo "Hello, Kubernetes!" && sleep 3600'] There is just one stanza, the ``containers`` stanza, which is a list of containers (recall that pods can contain multiple containers). Here we are defining just one container. For each container, we provide: * ``name`` (optional) -- this is the name of the container, similar to the name attribute in Docker. * ``image`` (required) -- the image we want to use for the container, just like with Docker. * ``command`` (optional) -- the command we want to run in the container. Here we are running a short BASH script. Creating the Pod In K8s ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ We are now ready to create our pod in k8s. To do so, we use the ``kubectl apply`` command. In general, when you have a description of a resource that you want to create or update in k8s, the ``kubectl apply`` command can be used. In this case, our description is contained in a file, so we use the ``-f`` flag. Try this now: .. code-block:: bash $ kubectl apply -f pod-basic.yml If all went well and k8s accepted your request, you should see an output like this: .. code-block:: bash pod/hello created .. note:: The message ``pod/hello created`` indicates that the description of the pod was valid, that k8s has saved the pod definition in its database and that it is working on starting the pod on the cluster. It does **not** mean the pod is already created/running on the cluster. In practice, we won't be creating many ``Pod`` resources directly -- we'll be creating other resources, such as ``deployments`` that are made up of pods -- but it is important to understand pods and to be able to work with pods using ``kubectl`` for debugging and other management tasks. .. note:: The pod we just created is running on the k8s cluster, NOT on isp02 and NOT on coe332-k8s.tacc.cloud. You will not be able to find it using commands like docker ps, etc. During the lecture, we'll draw a picture here to help explain what is going on. Working With Pods ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ We can use additional ``kubectl`` commands to get information about the pods we run on k8s. Listing Pods ------------- For example, we can list the pods on the cluster with ``kubectl get `` -- in this case, the object type is "pods": .. code-block:: bash $ kubectl get pods NAME READY STATUS RESTARTS AGE ds-staging-6df657fbd-tbht5 1/1 Running 0 34d elasticsearch-748f666f4f-svf2h 1/1 Running 0 76d hello 1/1 Running 0 3s kibana-f5b79569f-r4pl6 1/1 Running 0 78d sidecartest-5454b7d49b-q8fvw 3/3 Running 472 78d The output is fairly self-explanatory. We see a line for every pod which includes its name, status, the number of times it has been restarted and its age. Our ``hello`` pod is listed above, with an age of ``3s`` because we just started it but it is already RUNNING. Several additional pods are listed in my output above due to prior work sessions. A Word on Authentication and Namespaces --------------------------------------- With all the students running their own pods on the same k8s cluster, you might be wondering why you only see your pod or why you don't see my pods? The reason is that when you make an API request to k8s, you tell the API who you are and what *namespace* you want to make the request in. Namespaces in k8s are logically isolated views or partitions of the k8s objects. Your ``kubectl`` client is configured to make requests in a namespace that is private to you; we set these namespaces up for COE 332. We set up the k8s client configuration ahead of time for you. The client configuration resides in the file ``~/.kube/config``. Take a look at the file if you are interested. Getting and Describing Pods --------------------------- We can pass the pod name to the ``get`` command -- i.e., ``kubectl get pods `` -- to just get information on a single pod .. code-block:: bash $ kubectl get pods hello NAME READY STATUS RESTARTS AGE hello 1/1 Running 0 3m1s The ``-o wide`` flag can be used to get more information: .. code-block:: bash $ kubectl get pods hello -o wide NAME READY STATUS RESTARTS AGE IP NODE NOMINATED NODE READINESS GATES hello 1/1 Running 0 14m 172.16.178.1 kube-3.novalocal Finally, the ``kubectl describe `` command gives additional information, including the k8s events at the bottom. While we won't go into the details now, this information can be helpful when troubleshooting a pod that has failed: .. code-block:: bash $ kubectl describe pods hello Name: hello Namespace: jstubbs Priority: 0 Node: kube-3.novalocal/10.0.2.10 Start Time: Fri, 25 Mar 2022 21:52:11 +0000 Labels: Annotations: cni.projectcalico.org/containerID: cfb4e44a8f265f9cc2bde568606d2c01f37a72b238fa0cbdbd2478c9008c2dc0 cni.projectcalico.org/podIP: 172.16.178.1/32 cni.projectcalico.org/podIPs: 172.16.178.1/32 Status: Running IP: 172.16.178.1 IPs: IP: 172.16.178.1 Containers: hello: Container ID: containerd://6b06364267fcae79afbb132969608e26ab4e97473076f5e7856196bb9f88f44f Image: ubuntu:18.04 Image ID: docker.io/library/ubuntu@sha256:d8ac28b7bec51664c6b71a9dd1d8f788127ff310b8af30820560973bcfc605a0 Port: Host Port: Command: sh -c echo "Hello, Kubernetes!" && sleep 3600 State: Running Started: Fri, 25 Mar 2022 21:52:20 +0000 Ready: True Restart Count: 0 Environment: Mounts: /var/run/secrets/kubernetes.io/serviceaccount from kube-api-access-n7j9g (ro) Conditions: Type Status Initialized True Ready True ContainersReady True PodScheduled True Volumes: kube-api-access-n7j9g: Type: Projected (a volume that contains injected data from multiple sources) TokenExpirationSeconds: 3607 ConfigMapName: kube-root-ca.crt ConfigMapOptional: DownwardAPI: true QoS Class: BestEffort Node-Selectors: Tolerations: node.kubernetes.io/not-ready:NoExecute op=Exists for 300s node.kubernetes.io/unreachable:NoExecute op=Exists for 300s Events: Type Reason Age From Message ---- ------ ---- ---- ------- Normal Scheduled 10m default-scheduler Successfully assigned jstubbs/hello to kube-3.novalocal Normal Pulling 10m kubelet Pulling image "ubuntu:18.04" Normal Pulled 9m52s kubelet Successfully pulled image "ubuntu:18.04" in 7.784328594s Normal Created 9m52s kubelet Created container hello Normal Started 9m52s kubelet Started container hello Getting Pod Logs ---------------- Finally, we can use ``kubectl logs `` command to get the logs associated with a pod: .. code-block:: bash $ kubectl logs hello Hello, Kubernetes! Note that the ``logs`` command does not include the resource name ("pods") because it only can be applied to pods. The ``logs`` command in k8s is equivalent to that in Docker; it returns the standard output (stdout) of the container. Using Labels ------------ In the pod above we used the ``metadata`` stanza to give our pod a name. We can use ``labels`` to add additional metadata to a pod. A label in k8s is nothing more than a ``name: value`` pair that we create to organize objects in a meaningful way. We can choose any value for ``name`` and ``value`` that we wish but they must be strings. If you want to use a number like "10" for a label name or value, be sure to enclose it in quotes (i.e., ``"10"``). You can think of these ``name:value`` pairs as variables and values. So for example, you might create a label called ``shape`` with values ``circle``, ``triangle``, ``square``, etc. A more realistic label might be ``component_type`` with values ``api``, ``database``, ``worker``, etc. Multiple pods can have the same ``name:value`` label. Let's use the pod definition above to create a new pod with a label. Create a file called ``pod-label.yml``, open it up in an editor and paste the following code in: .. code-block:: yaml --- apiVersion: v1 kind: Pod metadata: name: hello-label labels: version: "1.0" spec: containers: - name: hello image: ubuntu:18.04 command: ['sh', '-c', 'echo "Hello, Kubernetes!" && sleep 3600'] Let's create this pod using ``kubectl apply``: .. code-block:: bash $ kubectl apply -f pod-label.yml pod/hello-label created Now when we list our pods, we should see it .. code-block:: $ kubectl get pods NAME READY STATUS RESTARTS AGE hello 1/1 Running 0 22m hello-label 1/1 Running 0 22s Filtering By Labels With Selectors ---------------------------------- Labels are useful because we can use ``selectors`` to filter our results for a given label name and value. To specify a label name and value, use the following syntax: ``--selector "="``. For instance, we can search for pods with the version 1.0 label like so: .. code-block:: bash $ kubectl get pods --selector "version=1.0" NAME READY STATUS RESTARTS AGE hello-label 1/1 Running 0 4m58s We can also just use the label name to filter with the syntax ``--selector ""``. This will find any pods with the label ````, regardless of the value. Additional Resources ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ * `k8s Pod Reference `_