Understanding kubernetes networking: pods

This post is going to attempt to demystify the several layers of networking operating in a kubernetes cluster. Kubernetes is a powerful platform embodying many intelligent design choices, but discussing the way things interact can get confusing: pod networks, service networks, cluster IPs, container ports, host ports, node ports… I’ve seen a few eyes glaze over. We mostly talk about these things at work, cutting across all layers at once because something is broken and someone wants it fixed. If you take it a piece at a time and get clear on how each layer works it all makes sense in a rather elegant way.

Understanding kubernetes networking: pods

Five things learned using terraform to manage cloud infrastructure

HashiCorp’s terraform is a powerful and extensible tool for defining and creating cloud infrastructure in a repeatable way. At Olark we use it to manage a number of different environments on Google Cloud Platform. On the journey from imperative to declarative infrastructure we’ve learned a few things. Here are five that I feel are particularly important. What follows are entirely my own opinions.

Five things learned using terraform to manage cloud infrastructure

Using unbound for private DNS resolution in kubernetes

Workloads running in kubernetes pods commonly need access to services outside the cluster. In heterogeneous architectures where some services run in kubernetes and others are implemented on cloud VMs this often means resolving private DNS names that point to either specific hosts or to internal load balancers that provide ingress to groups of hosts.

Using unbound for private DNS resolution in kubernetes