Overview

Managed Kubernetes facilitates the fully automated setup of Managed Kubernetes clusters. Several clusters can also be quickly and easily deployed, for example, to set up staging environments, and then to delete them again if necessary.

Managed Kubernetes also simplifies and carefully supports the automation of CI/CD pipelines in terms of testing and deployment.

Our solution offers the following:

• Automatic updates and security fixes.

• Version and upgrade provisioning.

• Highly available and geo-redundant control plane.

• Full cluster admin-level access to Kubernetes API.

The Kubernetes Manager

Everything related to Managed Kubernetes can be controlled in DCD via the dedicated Kubernetes Manager, which could be found in Menu Bar > Containers > Managed Kubernetes.

Kubernetes Manager provides a complete overview of your provisioned Kubernetes clusters and node pools including their status. Furthermore, you can:

• create and manage clusters

• create and manage node pools

• download the kubeconfig file

Clusters and node pools

Kubernetes is organized in clusters and node pools. The node pools are created in the context of a cluster. The servers belonging to the node pool are provisioned into virtual data centers. All servers within a node pool are identical in their configuration.

When viewing a data center that contains resources created by Kubernetes they will be represented as read-only. This is because they are managed by Kubernetes and manual interactions would cause interference.

Clusters

Clusters can span multiple node pools that may be provisioned in different virtual data centers and across locations. For example, you can create a cluster consisting of multiple node pools where each pool is in a different location and achieve geo-redundancy. For an in-depth description of how the clusters work, read the Setup of a Cluster.

All operations concerning the infrastructure of clusters can be performed using the Kubernetes Manager including cluster and node creation, and scaling of node pools.

The status of a cluster is indicated by a LED.

LED	Description
	The status is transitional. The cluster is in a transitional state and temporarily locked for modifications.
	The status is unavailable. The cluster is unavailable and locked for modifications.
	The status is in progress. Modifications to the cluster are in progress, the cluster is temporarily locked for modifications.
	The status is active. The cluster is available and running.

Node pools

All Kubernetes worker nodes are organized in node pools. All nodes within a node pool are identical in setup. The nodes of a pool are provisioned into virtual data centers at a location of your choice and you can freely specify the properties of all the nodes at once before creation.

All operations concerning the infrastructure of node pools can be performed using the Kubernetes Manager.

The status of a node pool is indicated by a LED.

LED	Description
	The status is transitional. The node pool is in a transitional state and temporarily locked for modifications.
	The status is unavailable. The node pool is unavailable and locked for modifications.
	The status is in progress. Modifications to the node pool are in progress. The node pool is locked for modifications.
	The status is active. The node pool is available and running.

Nodes and managed resources

Nodes or worker nodes are the servers in your data center that are managed by Kubernetes and constitute your node pools. Resources managed by Kubernetes in your data centers will be displayed by the DCD as read-only.

You can still see, inspect, and position the managed resources to your liking. However, the specifications of the resources are locked for manual interactions to avoid undesirable results. To modify the managed resources use the Kubernetes Manager. You can manage the following resource types: servers, storages, NICs, LANs, IP addresses (depending on your deployed pods and configurations).

A Kubernetes managed server in DCD and inspector pane.

The Inspector for managed resources permits no direct modifications to the resources themselves. It does allow easy navigation between the data center view and the cluster and node pools views in the Kubernetes Manager, as well as the following:

• Switching to the Kubernetes Manager and showing the respective node pool

• Downloading the kubeconfig for access to the cluster

• Listing all nodes in the data center belonging to the same node pool