Container Orchestration

This set of examples covers the practical aspects of the Container Orchestration Dojo. The following is set of instructions to install the required components for the practical. Each directory covers a particular concept with additional documentation provided.

Windows

1. Enable Hyper V in programs and features. This is only available on Windows 10 pro and above. If you do not have a valid version of Windows I suggest installing virtual box and running the solution in a linux vm instead. Note: Once you have enabled Hyper V, other virtualisation solutions will no longer work, such as virtual box. Delay your restart until after the next step.

2. Install Docker For Windows. If you would rather install docker machine instead, then do so at your own peril. The examples are done with Docker For Windows in mind. Restart your machine. Once restarted, you should see that Docker is running (If not the most likely case is that Hyper V is not working). To confirm that docker is running correctly, open a terminal and type docker ps -a. If don't see errors you are good to go.

3. Install KubeCtl. There are a couple of methods to install this on windows, but the simplest is to just download the binary and put it in a PATH location. You will not need to do this if you have Docker version 18.02 or above, since kubernetes is bundled together with Docker

4. Install MiniKube. You can just download the binary and put it into the PATH as well. You will not need to do this if you are using Docker version 18.02 or above, instead you will enable the Kubernetes cluster in the Docker Prefernces instead.

5. Start MiniKube with the Hyper-V Driver to check that everything is working okay. In your favourite terminal type minikube start --vm-driver=hyperv. If everything works you should see Kubectl is now configured to use the cluster. once it is completed. If you get any error messages I would suggest looking here. Again, not required if you have Docker Version 18.02 or above

Chocolately Install

If you prefer to use a package manager to install, then install the chocolately package manager which will then allow you to install the components with the following commands. You can also just install docker for windows and switch to edge instead if you don't want to install kubernetes and minikube.

choco install docker-for-windows -y
choco install kubernetes-cli -y
choco install minikube -y

Troubleshooting

If you are having problems pulling docker images, it might be that Docker is trying to use Minikube. You can try and reset to factory settings in the Docker settings to resolve this issue.

Minikube might fail to start, this might occur if you have multiple drives, you will need to ensure that you run the Minikube commands on the primary drive.

If you are running version 18.02 of Docker or above, you might have problems running Swarm and Kubernetes at the same time. You can disable the Kubernetes cluster to work with Swarm when you want to use Swarm mode.

Keeping it Clean

Use docker system prune to remove dangling images and containers. Just be aware that you could potentially lose data doing this. To really clean up your docker images run docker system prune -a which will remove all images not currently in use.