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Kubernetes management design patterns : with Docker, CoreOS Linux, and other platforms
Vohra D., Apress, New York, NY, 2017. 399 pp. Type: Book (978-1-484225-97-4)
Date Reviewed: Nov 29 2017

According to the Kubernetes website [1], Kubernetes is “an open-source system for automating deployment, scaling, and management of containerized applications.” If this sounds somewhat abstract, Vohra’s book will not help you, unfortunately. The reader should already have a solid understanding of Kubernetes’ usefulness and the intended roles it can play. The book does provide a practical guide to installing Kubernetes using Amazon Web Services (AWS) and the Google Cloud Platform to perform essential tasks, all clearly illustrated with many screen shots.

Kubernetes is heavily used by Google, which is no surprise since it originally developed it and released it to the world in June 2014; it has been in constant development and refinement ever since. This makes writing a book about Kubernetes a challenging task given the high risk of quickly being outdated. This is compounded by the detailed step-by-step approach the author has chosen. The book is filled with screen shots of every step the reader should take to follow the examples. Except for the occasional introduction page at a new chapter, literally every page of this book contains screen shots.

The abundance of screen shots and the step-by-step approach are not matched with a similar thorough discussion of Kubernetes concepts, or the reasons behind the implementation choices made during the exercises. This leaves a novice reader with the only option of simply copying the exercises in the book. As long as the exact same setup is used, this will work fine, but the detailed and minute approach does not leave much room for using alternatives.

Throughout the book, the full management cycle of Kubernetes is covered. Starting with installing Kubernetes on either Amazon’s or Google’s cloud service, the book guides the reader through using multiple zones to increase availability and stability, volumes, services, and updates. Commendably, the author also covers rolling back updates, a feature that is hardly mentioned in typical IT guides yet can be essential in case an update needs to be reversed.

From here, the scheduling of pods is described, as well as ConfigMaps, autoscaling, and logging. The last section covers the various high-availability features Kubernetes offers.

In summary, this book could be useful for those readers who appreciate a detailed and practical guide for installing and configuring Kubernetes’ many features. The countless screen shots and the many steps of each task can be easily followed. Unfortunately, the book will not enlighten the reader about the overall purpose of Kubernetes and it fails to provide the bigger picture. If the latter is required, then the reader could pick up a copy of Baier’s book [2]. Together, both books will give the reader a fuller picture, with Baier laying out the higher-level concepts and Vohra covering the step-by-step configuration.

Reviewer:  Riemer Brouwer Review #: CR145680 (1802-0067)
1) https://kubernetes.io/ (Accessed 11/28/17).
2) Baier, J. Getting started with Kubernetes (2nd ed.). Packt Publishing, Birmingham, UK, 2017.
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