Installing and configuring Kubernetes

Before installing or using Kubernetes, you have to decide on the infrastructure you’ll use, whether that be on-premises or public cloud. Second, you’ll have to choose between an Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) or a Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) model. With IaaS, you’ll have to install, configure, manage, and maintain the Kubernetes cluster yourself, either on physical (bare metal) or VMs. The related operation efforts are not straightforward and should be considered carefully. If you choose a PaaS solution, available from all major public cloud providers, you’ll be limited to only administrative tasks but saved from the burden of maintaining the underlying infrastructure.

In this chapter, we’ll cover only IaaS deployments of Kubernetes. For IaaS, we’ll use a local desktop environment running Ubuntu VMs.

For the on-premises installation, we may also choose between a lightweight desktop version of...