Streamline your startup’s growth: A guide to start and thrive with Kubernetes

Streamline your startup’s growth: A guide to start and thrive with Kubernetes Build • Alexandre Gestat • 20/02/23 • 5 min read

Starting a tech company is always challenging in terms of infrastructure choice. Technologies are fast-evolving, many use cases are different, and all access to resources are not always equal. That said, many experts agree on the choice of containers and Kubernetes to easily deploy and grow your business.

Kubernetes is the market's most renowned and widely-used container orchestrator, known for its ability to effectively monitor container processes and their network connection. It's a must-have when it comes to maintaining a container environment and build, test and run applications.

What makes Kubernetes so unique?

What makes Kubernetes so unique and what benefits can you expect from using it? For startups beginning to build their infrastructure, Kubernetes and containers are ideal. For one thing, containers allow for growth without placing too many limitations on the future. As a result, your infrastructure can be evolutive.

In addition, Kubernetes’ Autoscaling feature makes it possible to adapt pod deployment to the number of received requests while the Autohealing feature automatically respawns faulty containers. This, in turn, makes your infrastructure scalable and reliable.

As container architectures are portable, lock-in is limited to a particular technology provider. Because it can run in any Kubernetes environment, your infrastructure can thus migrate more easily. Container technology is the brain behind this: it simultaneously carries the OS, software and its dependencies.

But despite those great arguments, remember that Kubernetes can also be a challenging technology. Maintaining Kubernetes is complex. It requires a good understanding of the underlying infrastructure. On top of that, networking and security can prove to be tricky as your team needs to have a deep understanding of the subject to allow for smoother operations.

These Kubernetes challenges can still be mitigated by working with a managed service provider or Kubernetes consultant as well as investing in training and resources to build in-house expertise.

Whether you feel like it is wiser to keep a traditional approach, go full serverless and use small-scale applications, or simply maintain the status quo for legal or third-party constraints, having the full picture and knowing your options is good.

So, without further ado, let’s go through these steps to launch and scale your startup to new heights with Kubernetes!

Analyze your case

The first step is to take a look at your startup model and assess the need to start with Containers and Kubernetes so you can better understand why you are going in that direction. Understandably, your choices will often be challenged: by your clients, your team, new developers, or even your potential investors.

Two criteria to consider are scalability and the flexibility needs of your applications. Scalability depends on your business: How many users will you serve? How much data can you expect? What size of processes do you need to provide your service? When do you ideally need to scale up and down?

Human resource management is also an important topic to tackle. Estimate your team’s level of Kubernetes knowledge and anticipate all the future needs that it would require. Team members can perform a series of assessments or quizzes to gauge their understanding of various Kubernetes concepts! Plenty of material is available online like those CKAD exercises . Individually or as a team, you can obtain certifications such as the Certified Kubernetes Administrator (CKA) or the Certified Kubernetes Application Developer (CKAD).

You can also read our blog article on Should I use Kubernetes?

Take the plunge

By that point, it’s time to create your first Proof of Concept to confirm your decision, test the implementation, and actively understand how it applies in your environment. You can now identify potential issues (such as network misconfiguration, stuck deployment, or unresponsive pods) and adjust them before going further.

Developers may have a very different experience depending on the use case,the architecture they are trying to configure, and their own experience: each project has its own learning curve. Using a cloud provider with managed Kubernetes is a good idea as you can start fast and focus solely on how it works, without worrying about how to manage it.

Another interesting opportunity to learn Kubernetes is to use well-known applications and deploy them, so you can see how it works and understand dependencies. Learning how to deploy a Wordpress in a cluster is a great example. Also, do not forget to check out our complete library with more useful applications. Lastly, think about where you store and push your container images: you can host them on your own server or use a managed service such as Scaleway Container Registry.

Have you decided to settle on Kubernetes to start your application? Now is the time for the development phase! Start to write your first Kubernetes manifest, and create and deploy your first containers to test and see if it deploys as expected.

To fully master Kubernetes, you need to ensure you understand all the components around Kubernetes, like networking or data storage.

CNI in Kubernetes is a Network component responsible for allocating IP addresses, creating network namespaces, and setting up network interfaces and routes for pods, or even with the solution for persistent data storage. There are different existing plugins like Cilium, Flannel, Calico or Weave. Each network plug-in has different forces in security, application performance, or policy enforcement, which can fit a particular use case.

You can also configure a Load Balancer in front of your cluster to increase reliability and reduce external threats.

Volatility is assumed In Kubernetes' world: you need to understand how to sustainably store your data. Persistent Volume is a method to attach a storage volume with an independent lifecycle. To do that, you need to use a volume plugin called Container storage interface (CSI), which will connect persistent storage products such as Block Storage. So voluntary or not, a cluster can disappear and the data remain safe and available to restart afterward.

You can get inspired from this guide on service exposure and data persistence for a Kubernetes cluster - this tutorial is about…