When using Kubernetes, for more complex scenarios it is not enough to start the deployment or service. You also need to execute some commands within the containers to perform some configuration or initialization of the environment.

To automate configuration or the process of initializing an environment, you can write a Kubernetes operator.The Payara Kubernetes Operator, released as a Proof of Concept or Minimum Viable Product (MVP) in our June Payara Platform release, helps you to set up a Payara cluster using the Deployment Group feature of the Payara Server.

These days, it seems Kubernetes is a topic that is never too far from people's lips.  The tool, and the associated tools built around it, are talked about so often it seems it's the only subject important to developers these days - especially as the IT world becomes increasingly orientated towards cloud and microservices.

But in spite of all the conversation around Kubernetes... do you really need Kubernetes for your environment? Or is it just another case of the next 'new and shiny' object,  with people distracted by the novelty and possibility, rather than the facts? In this blog, I'll take a closer look at why Kubernetes might be a case of the hype outweighing the helpfulness in most cases. 

Foojay's Virtual JUG tour is in full swing, with the Java community platform organising a succession of online events at JUGs all across the world. 

As contributors to the Foojay platform, supporters from the start and members of itsinaugural advisory board, Payara Services was happy to participate. Rudy de Busscher presented his talk, 'Creating a Kubernetes Operator in Java', for the St. Louis Java User Group as part of the tour.

You can now watch this, and also hear Geertjan Wielenga introduce the concept of Foojay to start the talk.

In this day and age, securing enterprise platforms is a challenge that developers and consultants tackle in an uninformed manner, producing subpar solutions in most cases. To combat this pattern, third-party security services such as Auth0 have been devised to externalize the security of services, and they focus on stable implementations of common enterprise use cases (identity management, OAuth compatibility, and so on), and platforms such as Eclipse MicroProfile allow for their easy integration with enterprise Java microservices. Moreover, in combination with Kubernetes, MicroProfile is a very powerful tool to simplify securing microservices, monitoring them and creating reproducible deployments.

Introduction

With Container orchestration tools like Kubernetes and Docker Swarm, you can add instances quite easily. Depending on the type of clustering you need or use for your application, some scenarios are easier to implement than others.

Introduction

Application updates are required as part of the normal maintenance process of your application lifecycle management. These updates should be as smooth as possible, and especially for a micro-services environment, performed with zero-downtime of your Payara Micro application. The Kubernetes Rolling Upgrades feature can help you with this.

In this blog, I'll discuss the basics around Kubernetes ConfigMaps and Secrets and give two examples of how you can use them in combination with Payara Micro.

The term “Kubernetes” comes from the Greek “kubernan,” which means to steer or guide. You can think of Kubernetes like a pilot for apps that are stored and run together in containers and other forms of workload distribution software. The Greek “kubernan” was transformed over the years to relate to the term “Govern”, which is another helpful comparison when trying to understand the full capacity of Kubernetes.

Kubernetes is most commonly used with Docker managed containers, although it doesn't strictly depend on it. Kubernetes defines a Container Runtime Interface (CRI) that container platforms must implement in order to be compatible. These implementations are colloquially known as "shims". This makes Kubernetes platform agnostic so that instead of Docker you're free to use other platforms with corresponding shims, such as CRI-O or KataContainers.

When using Docker images as the way to deploy your application, many organizations use Kubernetes to manage the containerized version of their application. This blog gives you a short overview of Kubernetes and how to run your Payara Micro application in a scaled fashion by either defining the scaling manually, or automatically by the Horizontal Pod scaler.