Kubernetes and Cloud Native, just two goals as part of my new adventure . Two and a half months ago I started ‘sprakling fresh’ in my new job at Redlogic and I am still going strong! Great collegues, great knowledge and a great atmosphere. Yes, even in the digital world the atmosphere can be great. Last months I have been really working on myself, especially with improving and extending my skills. Unfortunately that also means my blog went somewhat silent, simply because a lack of time. But that should change as of now! Looking forward to my journey into Kubernetes and Cloud Native!

Focus on Cloud Native

This year is and has been quite an ambitious year for me. I have set a lot of goals for myself and already I have met some of these goals. One of the most important goals for me however is getting more involved in the world of Cloud Native. This is a broad spectrum, but since I am primarily a VMware minded guy this means my focus will go to VMware Tanzu and Kubernetes. It is my strong belief that the world is moving fast towards solutions running on Kubernetes and that being part of this solution will not only help me as an engineer, but also my future customers.

Blog

I have decided that I am going to blog about my journey into Cloud Native. Ofcourse there will still be a heavy emphasis on code and automation. Ultimately, that is why I am doing all this this for! However, it is impossible for me to say what it is going to look like. Will there be short pieces of code, will I make myself a project or do I take you along in my learning curve? I don’t know. Hopefully it will be a healthy and interesting combination of those three. Maybe with some sidetracks into vSphere and NSX-t.

Upcoming

To be real honest, soon enough I hope to post more about the following. One of my goals this year is to achieve the Certifified Kubernetes Administrator certificate (CKA). I know this is a tough one, especially when being new to this. The plan is to study a lot and soak as much information into my brain as possible. What I have noticed while studying is that it would be real handy if you can rebuild you Kubernetes cluster with the touch of a button. So I have set a few requirements for myself and I am working on an automated setup for my Kubernetes cluster. Pretty good stuff to blog about, right?

Exisiting automation

You might think or say that there is already a lot of stuff around to do this and guess what, you are right! There is quite some information available on automating the setup of your Kubernetes cluster and I am also planning to use this information extensively.Sofar though I found that using the existing scripts and solutions were not quite compatible with the requirements I set for myself.

What are my requirements?

Well, for starters I want to have control from my WSL2 Ubuntu 18.04 LTS installation. This installation should probably integrate with my regular Windows installation. Also I want to make use of Vagrant Ubuntu installations for my Kubernetes cluster and those VM’s should spin up in Oracle VirtualBox. In a later stadium I might want to do this on VMware Workstation as well. My VScode should be connected to the WSL2 Ubuntu and I want to be able to run all my code from there.

I am working on the setup described as above. Some interesting bumps already encountered and I still don’t know what is yet to come. Hopefully nothing too serious. When ready I will happily share my setup with the world!

Some interesting links

To get started with Cloud Native I found some interesting links. Guides, blogs, courses etcetera. Maybe this is helpful when you are a starter, just like me.
https://modernapps.ninja/blog/ – lots of information on Tanzu with some courses
https://kube.academy/ – lots of information on Kubernetes with some courses
https://kubernetes.io/ – official kubernetes page
https://tanzu.vmware.com/ – official VMware Tanzu page

Thanks for reading and till next time