Ensuring High Availability with Cloud-Managed Kubernetes

Managed Kubernetes solutions offer secure, reliable and practical handling of complex container environments. While container technology can streamline development with greater scalability and resource efficiency, some IT teams find themselves bogged down in the management overhead.

Is cloud native Kubernetes management the answer? In this article, we will examine the differences between self-hosted and managed Kubernetes services and reveal how you can ensure high availability even with cloud-managed Kubernetes.

What is Managed Kubernetes?

Managed Kubernetes is a cloud service where the infrastructure and operations of Kubernetes clusters are handled by a provider. This simplifies tasks like deployment, scaling, maintenance, and security, allowing teams to focus on application development.
Benefits of managed Kubernetes:

• Simplified Deployment: Easy setup and management without specialized Kubernetes knowledge.
• High Availability: Built-in redundancy for minimal downtime.
• Security: Automatic security patches and updates.
• Cloud Integration: Seamless scaling and resource management.

Managed Kubernetes is ideal for those looking for a hassle-free, secure and scalable container orchestration solution.

What is Unmanaged Kubernetes?

Unmanaged Kubernetes, or self-managed Kubernetes, gives organizations full control over their clusters. This requires manual setup, scaling and maintenance, as well as handling security patches and updates.

With unmanaged Kubernetes, you:

• Control Configuration: Complete control over setup and maintenance.
• Handle Scaling and Security: Manually scale and apply updates.
• Cost-Effective: Lower service fees but higher operational overhead.

Unmanaged Kubernetes is suited for organizations with Kubernetes expertise that need complete control over their environment.

What is Cloud-Managed Kubernetes?

Cloud-managed Kubernetes is a type of managed Kubernetes service that runs on a cloud provider’s infrastructure. This means that the cloud provider is responsible for managing the underlying infrastructure, such as the servers, networking, and storage, in addition to the Kubernetes control plane.

Cloud-managed Kubernetes can simplify the initial deployment as well as ongoing operations, reducing the number of knobs and dials — features, configurations, and other settings — that need to be tuned and optimized over time. They also offer additional features already built-in that would have to be added and integrated manually in self-managed deployments.

What Do Managed Kubernetes Providers Supply?

Managed Kubernetes providers offer a comprehensive set of services that simplify Kubernetes cluster management and ensure your containerized applications run smoothly. These services typically include:

• Cluster Setup and Maintenance: Providers handle the installation, configuration, and ongoing maintenance of Kubernetes clusters, ensuring they are always up to date and secure.
• Scaling and Load Balancing: Managed services automatically scale Kubernetes clusters based on demand and distribute traffic across nodes for optimal performance.
• Security and Compliance: Providers apply the latest security patches and ensure that Kubernetes clusters meet industry compliance standards, reducing the risk of vulnerabilities.
• Monitoring and Logging: Built-in tools for monitoring the health of clusters, as well as logging for troubleshooting and performance analysis.
• Backup and Recovery: Providers offer automatic backups of Kubernetes configurations and workloads, with disaster recovery options to minimize downtime.
• Integration with Cloud Services: Managed Kubernetes services integrate seamlessly with other cloud-native services like storage, networking, and databases, enabling a more cohesive infrastructure.

By leveraging a managed Kubernetes service, organizations can focus more on developing applications while leaving the complexities of cluster management to the provider.

The Role of High Availability in Kubernetes

While HA principles and practices can apply to any system, they are especially relevant to Kubernetes and cloud native applications.

High availability in Kubernetes enables applications to remain accessible even when an underlying component such as a node – one of the worker machines that keeps containerized applications up and running – fails. In this example, the failed node is removed from the cluster and its work is essentially (and automatically) reassigned to other nodes to ensure continuous application availability.

HA in Kubernetes is fundamentally about removing any single point of failure – no one component of an application or its infrastructure should be able to take down the whole system.

HA is especially crucial to modern enterprise applications, both those relied on internally by employees and externally by customers. As those applications become more distributed, eliminating single points of failure and leveraging redundancy, automation, and other key concepts has become vital to productivity, revenue, customer experience and other metrics.

Best Practices for Maintaining High Availability

Once HA is achieved with the above strategies, there are several best practices for maintaining it over time. These include:

• Continuous Monitoring and Alerting: Tools like Prometheus, Grafana, and other cloud native options give teams the ability to keep close tabs on their applications and environments and proactively address potential issues when they arrive.

• Consistent Updating and Patching: As with most other IT systems, regularly applying software updates and patches is crucial for fixing bugs, plugging security holes, and remedying other issues that could impact availability. This is yet another benefit of a managed Kubernetes environment, in that the vendor is usually responsible for ensuring timely updates and patches to the system.

• Automating Failover and Recovery: This is an ideal example of why Kubernetes is well-suited to HA strategies: automation is a cornerstone of both. There’s no such thing as a cloud native application where HA is achieved and maintained in an entirely manual fashion. Rather, Kubernetes automation is a great lever for relieving DevOps teams of the burden of putting out fires. If a pod (the smallest deployable unit in K8s architecture) fails, Kubernetes can spin another one up automatically to take its place, with no disruption to the application.

Cloud Provider-Specific HA Features

Again, AWS, GCP and Azure all offer managed Kubernetes solutions, each with built-in features for HA. Below, we’ll share examples from each:

AWS Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS): multi-region and multi-availability zone deployments, auto-scaling, and built-in load balancers, plus services like RDS, CloudWatch, and Route 53.

Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE): regional clusters, auto-repair (essentially a health check-up for nodes in your cluster), and node auto-upgrades, plus services like Cloud Load Balancing, Cloud Operations, and Persistent Disks for HA.

Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS): availability zones, VM scale sets, and Azure Traffic Manager, plus services like Application Gateway, Monitor, and SQL Database for achieving HA.

Last Thoughts: You can Achieve High Availability with Managed Kubernetes

Choosing the right Kubernetes solution for your organization involves carefully weighing the pros and cons of managed and unmanaged services. While unmanaged Kubernetes offers greater control and potential cost savings, it requires significant Kubernetes expertise and dedicated resources for maintenance.

Kubernetes is a great fit for high availability strategies, but achieving HA won’t happen magically. Learn more about building a highly-available Kubernetes cluster with Rancher.

Managed Kubernetes offers built-in high availability features. This allows your teams to focus on application development and innovation, rather than infrastructure management.

With cloud-managed Kubernetes, organizations can achieve highly available and scalable applications.

Ready to uplevel your cloud native capabilities? Explore SUSE’s cloud native solutions to accelerate your digital transformation.

Managed Kubernetes FAQs

What is Vanilla Kubernetes?
Vanilla Kubernetes is the standard, unmodified version of Kubernetes. It requires manual setup, configuration, and ongoing management by the user, offering full control but demanding technical expertise.

How Many Containers Can Kubernetes Manage?
Kubernetes can manage thousands of containers, with the exact number depending on factors like hardware and configuration. In large environments, it can handle tens of thousands of containers.

What Are the Key Differences Between Managed Kubernetes and Self-Managed Kubernetes?

• Management: Managed Kubernetes is handled by a provider, while self-managed requires manual setup and maintenance.
• Ease of Use: Managed Kubernetes offers automation and ease of use; self-managed requires more hands-on expertise.
• Cost: Managed Kubernetes typically incurs additional fees, whereas self-managed may reduce costs but needs more internal resources.