Comment by linsomniac | Hacker News Reader

Comment by linsomniac | Hacker News Reader

I really wanted to like Kubernetes, but I couldn't figure it out. I'm a pretty experienced Linux admin, and despite days of reading all the sources of documentation I could find I couldn't get the networking setup to where I thought it should be.

I don't know if that was a problem of my mental model being wrong and the documentation not educating me on the correct model, or the documentation of the CNI, Flannel/whatever just being too sparse, or what.

I started with the Google Ubuntu packages, and was able to get containers up fairly quickly, but being able to access them from anything other than the host machine I just couldn't figure out. Asking for help on IRC wasn't useful (aside: what's the deal with IRC channels with tons of users but no messages for days?)

I've since wiped that cluster and tried the Ubuntu Kubernetes installation using conjure-up, it seems like it did the right thing but I'm not sure yet how to get to a cluster from a single machine.

Trying to decide if I pursue Kubernetes more, try Dokku/Flynn/Deis (which I just saw referenced in a previous HN discussion) because they look really promising...

I had hoped it would be the ganeti of containerization, but I had far fewer problems with ganeti.

You should take a look at Rancher[1]. I think it has the right mix of raw access to Kubernetes and associated tools, but also addresses some of the requirements you have.

1: https://rancher.com

Disclaimer: I've been working in the container ecosystem for a number of years, currently at Rancher.

FWIW, if you create a GKE cluster and create an nginx deployment:

kubectl apply -f https://k8s.io/docs/tasks/run-application/deployment.yaml

And simply create a Load Balancer:

https://kubernetes.io/docs/tasks/access-application-cluster/...

You have nginx exposed via an external IP address in about two minutes. Once you're comfortable with that, you can start working in Ingress and such to get more sophisticated.

I agree the IRC/Slack channel communication isn't the best. I prefer the Kubernetes User Group. You can usually get a great response in less than a day. I've used it a lot.

I was going to suggest this. Create a GKE cluster and play with it for a while to see what you’re supposed to have. Then you can create one yourself from scratch once you understand the target.

well that's what I tried. and basically I get:

> gcloud container clusters get-credentials cluster-1 ...trimmed

> Fetching cluster endpoint and auth data.

> ERROR: (gcloud.container.clusters.get-credentials) ResponseError: code=404, message=The resource "projects/infinite-alcove-164114/zones/europe-west3-c/clusters/cluster-1" was not found.

> Could not find [cluster-1] in [europe-west3-c].

> Did you mean [cluster-1] in [europe-west3]?

note that neither gcloud alpha, nor glcoud beta nor europe-west3-(a|b|c) worked.

prolly a bug when using `Regional (Beta)`.

Try:

gcloud beta clusters get-credentials cluster-1 --region europe-west3

You need the beta command, and you need to set the region flag instead of the zone flag. Looks like there are some documentation and UX gaps, I'm opening tickets to get them fixed (I work for Google).

hm... thanks. I also needed to set `gcloud beta config set container/use_v1_api_client false`. well I also was to lazy to just copy & past from the connect window.

I was in the Regional Alpha so I'm familiar with this but it's been awhile since I had the issue. The fix I believe was;;

export CLOUDSDK_CONTAINER_USE_V1_API_CLIENT=false

Note; It's in beta now and I believe --region was added to the recent gcloud command but I could be incorrect. If you have problems msg me on k8s slack, mikej, I can run through it with you.

I don't believe you need this at all now that it's beta, but I set up my beta regional cluster a few weeks ago.

Also, re: IRC, there are 27k people on the k8s slack. I've used k8s for years and never gone into irc. I just don't use irc anymore.

thanks for your help, but I guess I'm fine now (just trying out stuff) well the ENV probably would have helped but there is also a config: `gcloud beta config set container/use_v1_api_client false` and I needed the --region (I always used --zone, since that was what the GUI suggested).

Make sure you setup gcloud and kubectl bash autocomplete. Kind of essential to me, especially kubectl.

I am not a Linux expert, but I deployed clusters to 5 Raspberry Pi and Azure with custom terraform scripts. With the kubeadm things are much more straightforward now. My suggestion is to start with minikube with kubeadm bootstrapper than use more complicated solutions. https://kubernetes.io/docs/setup/pick-right-solution

Most of kube-users hang out on slack. I am not saying you will get definite answers but as a k8s core contributor - I can definitely say that most developers are on slack rather than IRC.

I've found one way past it: kubespray

I spent the morning listening to presentations from Kubecon last week, and a guy mentioned it in passing in one of the presentations. Went and looked at it and it's an Ansible playbook for deploying Kubernetes clusters. Respun my test nodes with a bare install and ran kubespray and I was up and running with Calico networking all set up, I'm able to get to the test pod I set up from anywhere.

So pro tip: Kubespray, especially if you are familiar with ansible!

Your experience is a real shame, truly. If Kubernetes could fix their horrendous documentation and onboarding story, I think you'd have a much better experience. After bruising past that battle, I found Kubernetes to be the perfect mix of sanity and opinionated architecture. I think part of it is also due to how rapidly it's evolved over the past 2 years, so hopefully you get a chance to revisit it once some of those rough edges are smoothed over!

Watch tutorials by Kelsey Hightower, he's been helping folks understand the differences and the models. e.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HlAXp0-M6SY

I don't know what IRC channels you're referring to, but the Kubernetes Slack is very active. I've gotten a lot of help there. It also has channels where the devs are active.

I feel what you are going through. I wrote this last week trying to help: http://blog.cloud66.com/8-components-you-need-to-run-contain...

not sure if it helps, but I recently did a series of posts on my blog on installing Kubernetes from scratch on a set of CoreOS guests on Xen, with flannel, RBAC, TLS and so on and it does give you a cluster that you should be able to access from the outside no problem.

Link in my profile, I tried to make as low in magic as possible, I just ended up writing a couple of bash functions and a python script to make it easier to assemble the Ignition files for the deployment, but besides that it should all be step by step.

No worries, we understand the pain, we've all been there.

The abstracted network is a constant source of headache when dealing with kubernetes and containers.

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