Best of 2019 Blogs, Part 5: Don’t Be Scared of Kubernetes

This week and next, we're bringing you the top 5 most popular blog posts about Docker Enterprise from 2019. The #2 post started as a fun idea for Halloween. We quickly realized that while everyone is talking about Kubernetes, a lot of people are afraid to make a big commitment to it. This post captures some of the reasons people tend to hesitate, and why there's no reason to be afraid.

5 Reasons You Might Be Afraid to Get Started with Kubernetes

Kubernetes has the broadest capabilities of any container orchestrator available today, which adds up to a lot of power and complexity. That can be overwhelming for a lot of people jumping in for the first time – enough to scare people off from getting started. There are a few reasons it can seem intimidating:

• It’s complicated, isn’t it? As we noted in a previous post, jumping into the cockpit of a state-of-the-art jet puts a lot of power under you, but how to actually fly the thing is not obvious. If you’ve never done more than play a flight simulator game, it can be downright scary.
• Is it production-ready? Everyone is talking about Kubernetes, but it’s only emerged as a major technology in the past few years. Many companies take a wait-and-see approach on new technologies. Building out a Kubernetes deployment on your own means solving challenging problems without enterprise support. 
• Do I have the people and skills to support it? IT teams are just beginning to learn Kubernetes. If it’s complicated, it means you’ll need people with the right experience to support it. According to industry data, jobs for Kubernetes were up 176 percent in 2018. Anyone with Kubernetes experience is in high demand, so they’re hard to hire.
• Does it automate and replace my job in IT? Kubernetes does automate a lot of tasks tied to application infrastructure and allows developers and DevOps teams to treat infrastructure as code. Anyone who builds and maintains application infrastructure could look at it and see a future where their job isn’t relevant.
• Is it just a fad? Some technologies have a brief moment where they shine, but fade into relative obscurity. Interest in Objective-C rose quickly in 2010 and 2011, but a few years later it barely registers in conversations on the popular Stack Overflow site. Kubernetes is popular now, but will it be in 5 years?

[caption id="attachment_669251" align="alignnone" width="1024"] Photo by Nick Jio on Unsplash[/caption]

5 Reasons You Can Get Started with Kubernetes Today

Thankfully, Kubernetes is a robust platform with broad industry support both in the Open Source community and beyond. Here are 5 reasons you don’t need to be scared to get started with Kubernetes:

• It doesn’t have to be complicated. Docker makes it easy to on-board and use Kubernetes for both Day 1 and Day 2 operations. With the Docker platform, Kubernetes is easy for both dev and ops teams to use as their default orchestration platform.
• Big companies use it at scale, in production. GSK runs a global data science platform on Kubernetes. Visa is building a machine-learning and analytics platform on Kubernetes. McKesson, the #6 firm on the Fortune 500, has an internal developer platform based on Kubernetes. All of these companies run Kubernetes on Docker Enterprise for critical workloads.
• You can get started without knowing everything. You don’t need detailed knowledge or certifications to get going. The Docker platform provides a highly available and secure set up of Kubernetes out-of-the-box, surfaces the controls and features you need at the beginning, and lets you begin using Kubernetes from the desktop to the cloud right away. As your team’s skills grow, they can still directly interact with the certified Kubernetes distribution underneath – giving them full control over the advanced configuration and settings.
• It helps ops teams grow professionally. Kubernetes helps expand the role of IT ops in an organization. With Kubernetes and Docker, you can provide a complete platform to your developers that works on any machine or any cloud.
• Kubernetes has a mature ecosystem. All the major cloud providers support Kubernetes. Docker, Red Hat/IBM, VMware and other vendors have Kubernetes-specific solutions. Hundreds of solutions now plug in to Kubernetes for everything from storage, networking, monitoring, and alerting to security, IoT and AI.

If you’re looking at Kubernetes, there’s never been a better time to get started – that’s after you are done with the Halloween parties and Trick or Treating!