Today, almost every specialist related to IT technologies not only knows what the term “containerization” means, but most likely knows the practice of running software in containers.
This “container technology” or containerization is one of the most accepted ways to deploy software today.
In turn, to manage containers, you need an orchestrator, the role of which is played by the Kubernetes or K8s platform.
Practice has shown that it is business that is in dire need of K8s technology. After all, it is necessary to provide support for certain containerized applications and apply tools for their deployment and scaling just in their IT infrastructure.
To implement such a project and at the same time reduce its costs, you need to use the Kubernetes migration tool.
DevOps Methodology For Business Projects
So, a certain business project needs to be migrated to Kubernetes. What is needed for this in the first place? Of course, a team of specialists and the use of a DevOps approach.
It should be noted that today the DevOps methodology is becoming more widespread in companies providing IT services.
The reason for this lies in the fact that the use of such an approach significantly increases the effectiveness of the work of specialists.
Simply put, two processes – development (Dev) and operations (Ops), which previously functioned as two independent, and sometimes conflicting types of activity, brought their functions as close as possible to achieve a joint result.
And, in fact, there was not just a formal rapprochement. A whole DevOps world or, if you like, DevOps ideology was created, which combined certain approaches to teamwork with a new work environment formed to implement the following tasks:
1) Carry out work on the project in series-parallel in order to optimally use the time of work without gaps and downtime, as well as ensure that the team’s specialists are constantly in the subject
2) Create such communication links that will ensure the constant interaction of team members with each other
3) Provide an appropriate working environment for team specialists in order to motivate them to achieve an effective result
4) Aim specialists for a detailed analysis and creation of such a project that can provide sufficient independence to its nodes during operation. That is, to follow the principle: “Stopping one node should not lead to stopping the entire system”
5) Strive to increase the satisfaction of not only consumers, but also team specialists
Migration Steps To Kubernetes
A competent team of specialists, applying the DevOps ideology, can implement the migration of any project to Kubernetes.
Although project assignments vary from company to company, the structure of the migration approach follows certain rules, regardless of the project.
This means that the process for implementing any Kubernetes migration project can be divided into several steps.
1.) Familiarization
The DevOps team begins its work by getting to know the customer’s project. After that, they conduct a joint discussion with the customer of the individual features of the project and the possibilities of its migration, taking into account these features.
2.) Audit
The specialists of the team carry out an independent and comprehensive analysis of the entire architecture of the project. Such deep study is necessary in order to develop a migration strategy and all preparations as correctly as possible.
3.) Containerization
The specialists implement the process of preparing project applications for migration. This process includes a number of tests of various project`s features in relation to different scenarios.
4.) Creating Chart
Using the Helm package manager, the specialists create a chart package to make it easy to install and upgrade any Kubernetes application, no matter how is its difficulty level.
5.) Using Terraform
At this stage, the possibility of declarative management of the project infrastructure is created by a special Terraform tool.
This allows to bring the infrastructure management system to a similar version control system for its further analysis and return to its original state in case of problems.
6.) Launch
It`s a result of the work of the team in the previous phases. The project is migrated to Kubernetes, and the team receive feedback by monitoring relevant performance metrics.
7.) Maintenance
The team is engaged in the process of optimizing the project on the k8s platform. Various parameters related to scalability, security, etc. become the objects of optimization.
8.) Communications
Interaction with the customer of the project continues. If necessary and in agreement with the customer, the DevOps team develops the project by introducing various updates.
