Linux Containers (LXC) vs Docker

Aug 17, 2024

Tools of the trade In the rapidly changing world of software development, containerization technology has become an essential tool for developers seeking to improve efficiency and maintain consistency across different environments. Among the leading container technologies, Linux Containers (LXC) and Docker are particularly popular. It’s important for us to understand the distinctions between these options to choose the best tool that suits our project’s specific requirements. Linux Containers (LXC) Linux Containers (LXC) is a sophisticated virtualization technology that leverages core Linux kernel features to create lightweight, isolated environments, allowing multiple applications to run efficiently on a single host system.…

Building Docker Images in Kubernetes with Kaniko for Jenkins CI

Jul 28, 2024

Kaniko in Kubernetes with Jenkins The Case for Kaniko If we need to build a Docker image inside a k8s cluster, Kaniko is the tool for the job. I tried using k8s agent executers in Jenkins on my k3s cluster running on Linux containers. Since I’m running containerd as the container runtime in k3s, and did not want to run a priviledged container for building the images, I did some research on the subject, which made me stumble upon Kaniko1.…

K8s Resources: Controller vs Operator

Jul 27, 2024

Controller Kubernetes controllers are integral components of the platform, responsible for maintaining the desired state of native resources within a cluster. Controllers are designed to manage built-in resources, such as ReplicaSets, Deployments, and Services. Controllers follow the Kubernetes “controller pattern,” a control loop that monitors changes in the desired state and updates the cluster accordingly. For example, when a Deployment is created, the Deployment controller ensures that the specified number of replicas for a particular application is running.…

K8s Resources: Deployment vs ReplicaSet

Jul 18, 2024

Deployment A Deployment is a K8s object that oversees a group of identical pods, ensuring that a certain number of replicas are always running. It offers a declarative method for managing Kubernetes objects, enabling automated rollouts and rollbacks of containerized applications. Additionally, a Deployment handles the deployment of new application versions and facilitates rollbacks to previous versions by creating and updating a ReplicaSet with the new configuration. A ReplicaSet maintains the desired number of pod replicas, creating new ones if any fail to ensure the desired state is preserved.…

Kubernetes Setup on Proxmox with K3s, Terraform and Ansible

Jul 17, 2024

Kubernetes (aka K8s) vs K3s K3s is a lightweight K8s distribution suitable for edge computing and resource-constrained environments where a low resource footprint is sought. When combined with Proxmox, a powerful open-source virtualization platform, it allows for efficient and flexible cluster management. Utilizing Terraform for infrastructure provisioning and Ansible for configuration management streamlines the deployment process, ensuring a consistent and repeatable setup. Prerequisites Assuming we have Proxmox VE, along with Terraform and Ansible installed on their, we need to ensure our Proxmox server has a properly configured network bridge to allow communication between VMs and the external network.…

Common Deployment Strategies

Jul 14, 2024

Once we have the our code ready to be deployed, there are multiple ways that we could proceed with the deployment. This post looks into some of the most common deployment strategies. Big Bang Deployment This is one of the earliest methods of deployments, where we deploy all our changes at once, causing some downtime while we transition from the old system to the new. While usually short, the downtime depends on the scale of the system.…

Setting Up Nextcloud with Terraform and Ansible

Jul 14, 2024

What is it? Nextcloud is an opensource solution which provides functionality similar to Dropbox1. With my new homelab waiting for a hosted service, I choose to deploy Nextcloud on a VM. Provisioning the Compute resources We can create VMs in Proxmox with KVM supporting QEMU2 (short form for Quick Emulator), which is an open source hypervisor that emulates a physical computer. From the perspective of the host system where QEMU is running, QEMU is a user program which has access to a number of local resources like partitions, files, network cards which are then passed to an emulated computer which sees them as if they were real devices.…

Homelab Setup on a Laptop

Jul 13, 2024

An “Old” Laptop Ever since I entered the corporate world of work, I’ve been using my PC less and less, which resulted in my “old” laptop from uni days being not used for weeks on end. So, to have a test-bed for my digital shenanigans as well as a to self-host services, I’ve considered turning the unused bare metal into a virtualized data center :) Virtaulization FTW! With Red Hat unilaterally terminating CentOS development in favor of CentOS Stream1, I considered what OS/hypervisor to run for virtualization.…

Mounting Binary Applications on Docker

Apr 26, 2024

How? We can bind-mount a binary from host on a docker guest with below in the Dockerfile. mycontainer: image: myimage volumes: - './path/on/docker/host:/path/inside/container'#...In a devcontainer.json file, above can be accomplished with below. { "name": "mycontainer", "mounts": [ { "source": "./path/on/docker/host", "target": "/path/inside/container", "type": "bind" }, ], //... } In above fashion, we can bind application binaries as well. However, dynamically linked applications might not work as expected due to dependency errors in case the docker image does not have necessary shared libraries.…

Highly Available Web App Architecture on Amazon EC2

Jan 11, 2024

The overall architecture would be as follows. HA Web App on EC2 We increase website reliability by creating a highly available architecture that spans multiple Availability Zones with load balancing and health monitoring. Amazon Route 53 is used for DNS services. Amazon CloudFront, which is the AWS Content Dilivery Network service, is used to deliver static and dynamic content. CloudFront can cache frequently accessed content to decrease latency. Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3), which is an object storate service, is used to store static assets, such as images and video.…