“Not everyone runs Kubernetes in production, but most have experimented with it.” That’s a common statement among IT analysts.
Kubernetes has become the standard for container virtualization in the cloud-native era. It enables quick builds and offers scalability and flexibility for deploying applications across hybrid cloud environments. Just like any other business application, Kubernetes requires robust storage solutions, but getting there hasn’t been straightforward. Initially, Kubernetes was designed for stateless application runtime, meaning its storage and data protection options were quite limited.
This guide explores how Kubernetes manages persistent data storage and data protection, focusing on the evolution driven by Operators and StatefulSets.
We’ll dive into the key features of Kubernetes, highlight the persistent storage and backup challenges, and discuss how the landscape has changed. Analysts weigh in on how enterprises are adopting Kubernetes, their maturity level, and the hurdles companies face when transitioning to cloud-native approaches with containers.
Disaster recovery is another crucial topic we explore for Kubernetes environments. We identify the main challenges in deploying Kubernetes DR, the risks we need to address, and how to create an effective plan, along with the infrastructure required for success.
Google engineer Saad Ali reflects on the early storage challenges with Kubernetes and how Operators brought a new level of application awareness. Meanwhile, Michelle Au, another Google engineer, shares insights from her work on Kubernetes storage and the development of crucial features like snapshots for data protection.
We also hear from Patrick McFadin at Datastax about how Kubernetes has outperformed the competition, the roles of StatefulSet and Operators in solving critical issues, and why some obstacles still remain. Sergey Pronin from Percona recalls advocating for “Kubernetes for stateless” when storage provisioning was difficult, and how Operators and Stateful Sets changed that narrative.
Jan Safranek from Red Hat discusses the excitement around containers as a novel approach to application deployment and the necessary advancements that have shaped Kubernetes into a mature enterprise platform. Lastly, VMware engineer Xing Yang details the evolution of Kubernetes storage, highlighting how its modular and extensible roots have led to innovations in storage and backup through Operators.
Lastly, let’s talk about etcd, a lightweight yet powerful key-value store that each node in a Kubernetes cluster can access. We’ll break down how etcd operates and its integral role within Kubernetes environments.