Kubernetes Workloads:

Kubernetes workloads are divided into two major components: pods (the basic building block) and controllers (e.g. ReplicaSet, Deployment, StatefulSet, CronJob, etc.).

Pods:

A Pod for Kubernetes is what a container is for Docker: the smallest and simplest unit in its object model. It's helpful to conceptualize Pods as a single instance of an application—or a container. In reality, a Pod encapsulates one or more containers as well as storage resources, an IP address, and rules on how the container(s) should run.

Use Cases for Different Types of Workload Resources:

Workload Resource	Common Use Cases
Deployment and ReplicaSet	A Deployment provides declarative updates for Pods and ReplicaSets. You describe a desired state in a Deployment, and the Deployment Controller changes the actual state to the desired state at a controlled rate. You can define Deployments to create new ReplicaSets, or to remove existing Deployments and adopt all their resources with new Deployments. A ReplicaSet's purpose is to maintain a stable set of replica Pods running at any given time. As such, it is often used to guarantee the availability of a specified number of identical Pods.
StatefulSet	As the name implies, StatefulSets are often used for stateful applications. StatefulSets can also be used for highly available applications and applications that need multiple pods and server leaders. For example, a highly available RabbitMQ messaging service.
DaemonSet	DaemonSets are often used for log collection or node monitoring. For example, the Elasticsearch, Fluentd, and Kibana (EFK) stack can be used for log collection.
Job and CronJob	CronJobs and Jobs are used to run pods that only need to run at specific times, such as creating a database backup. A CronJob creates Jobs on a repeating schedule.
Custom Resource	Custom resources are often used for multiple purposes, such as top-level kubectl support or adding Kubernetes libraries and CLIs to create and update new resources. An example of a new resource is a Certificate Manager, which enables HTTPS and TLS support.

Creating a Deployment:

The following is an example of a Deployment. It creates a ReplicaSet to bring up three nginx Pods:

apiVersion: apps/v1
kind: Deployment
metadata:
  name: nginx-deployment
  labels:
    app: nginx
spec:
  replicas: 3
  selector:
    matchLabels:
      app: nginx
  template:
    metadata:
      labels:
        app: nginx
    spec:
      containers:
      - name: nginx
        image: nginx:1.14.2
        ports:
        - containerPort: 80

ReplicaSet :

ensures that a specified number of pod replicas are running at any given time.

apiVersion: apps/v1
kind: ReplicaSet
metadata:
  name: frontend
  labels:
    app: guestbook
    tier: frontend
spec:
  # modify replicas according to your case
  replicas: 3
  selector:
    matchLabels:
      tier: frontend
  template:
    metadata:
      labels:
        tier: frontend
    spec:
      containers:
      - name: php-redis
        image: gcr.io/google_samples/gb-frontend:v3

Saving this manifest into frontend.yaml and submitting it to a Kubernetes cluster will create the defined ReplicaSet and the Pods that it manages.

Components of a StatefulSet:

The example below demonstrates the components of a StatefulSet.

apiVersion: v1
kind: Service
metadata:
  name: nginx
  labels:
    app: nginx
spec:
  ports:
  - port: 80
    name: web
  clusterIP: None
  selector:
    app: nginx
---
apiVersion: apps/v1
kind: StatefulSet
metadata:
  name: web
spec:
  selector:
    matchLabels:
      app: nginx # has to match .spec.template.metadata.labels
  serviceName: "nginx"
  replicas: 3 # by default is 1
  minReadySeconds: 10 # by default is 0
  template:
    metadata:
      labels:
        app: nginx # has to match .spec.selector.matchLabels
    spec:
      terminationGracePeriodSeconds: 10
      containers:
      - name: nginx
        image: registry.k8s.io/nginx-slim:0.8
        ports:
        - containerPort: 80
          name: web
        volumeMounts:
        - name: www
          mountPath: /usr/share/nginx/html
  volumeClaimTemplates:
  - metadata:
      name: www
    spec:
      accessModes: [ "ReadWriteOnce" ]
      storageClassName: "my-storage-class"
      resources:
        requests:
          storage: 1Gi

Create a DaemonSet:

You can describe a DaemonSet in a YAML file. For example, the daemonset.yaml file below describes a DaemonSet that runs the fluentd-elasticsearch Docker image:

apiVersion: apps/v1
kind: DaemonSet
metadata:
  name: fluentd-elasticsearch
  namespace: kube-system
  labels:
    k8s-app: fluentd-logging
spec:
  selector:
    matchLabels:
      name: fluentd-elasticsearch
  template:
    metadata:
      labels:
        name: fluentd-elasticsearch
    spec:
      tolerations:
      # these tolerations are to have the daemonset runnable on control plane nodes
      # remove them if your control plane nodes should not run pods
      - key: node-role.kubernetes.io/control-plane
        operator: Exists
        effect: NoSchedule
      - key: node-role.kubernetes.io/master
        operator: Exists
        effect: NoSchedule
      containers:
      - name: fluentd-elasticsearch
        image: quay.io/fluentd_elasticsearch/fluentd:v2.5.2
        resources:
          limits:
            memory: 200Mi
          requests:
            cpu: 100m
            memory: 200Mi
        volumeMounts:
        - name: varlog
          mountPath: /var/log
      terminationGracePeriodSeconds: 30
      volumes:
      - name: varlog
        hostPath:
          path: /var/log

Running an example Job:

Here is an example Job config. It computes π to 2000 places and prints it out. It takes around 10s to complete.

apiVersion: batch/v1
kind: Job
metadata:
  name: pi
spec:
  template:
    spec:
      containers:
      - name: pi
        image: perl:5.34.0
        command: ["perl",  "-Mbignum=bpi", "-wle", "print bpi(2000)"]
      restartPolicy: Never
  backoffLimit: 4

Cronjob Example:

This example CronJob manifest prints the current time and a hello message every minute:

apiVersion: batch/v1
kind: CronJob
metadata:
  name: hello
spec:
  schedule: "* * * * *"
  jobTemplate:
    spec:
      template:
        spec:
          containers:
          - name: hello
            image: busybox:1.28
            imagePullPolicy: IfNotPresent
            command:
            - /bin/sh
            - -c
            - date; echo Hello from the Kubernetes cluster
          restartPolicy: OnFailure

Thank you for reading!Happy Learning!!

Santosh Chauhan

#KubeWeek Challenge Day-3 Kubernetes Workloads (Deployments, Jobs, CronJobs, etc.)

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