I've wanted to learn Kubernetes (k8s) for a while now. Honestly, though, I have been so intimidated by it. At a high level, I understood the value, but at a practical level, I have always been completely lost.
So why k8s? Why learn it now, and for what purpose?
The compelling moment for me was due to some elements at work. I have been involved with Neoclouds for three years now, and managed Kubernetes with GPUs is a major feature/functionality in the space. Every day on prospect or partner calls, I hear how people want to use k8s to manage their compute easier.
The plan is that throughout the week, I will get hands-on experience working with k8s. Then, at the end of a week, I'll make a post sharing all the things I learned. The good and the bad. I assume no one will read this, but who knows, maybe this will be helpful to someone.
Week 1 Recap
This first week, I focused on the prep. I purchased some equipment, which all has arrived. I bought some switches to setup and utilize VLANs, I bought mini PCs to be my compute, and I installed Proxmox v9 on those hosts. I chose Proxmox because its an OS i’m familiar with and it gives me flexibility to spin up and down VMs as needed.
I decided to go all in with Mikrotik on the networking side. They make it pretty easy to create and manage VLANs. The process of going from ISP devices to my Mikrotik equipment was a learning experience in itself. I still don't understand some of it. That story is maybe for another day.
For Mini PCs, I choose M715q devices. I found a great offer on eBay for the M715q that has 8 threads and 16GB of RAM. This seemed like a perfect option to use in Proxmox as I could make a control plane and one worker. Or each machine can be broken into two workers per machine.
What’s next?
I hope to have created a small cluster by next week and begun setting up an HA control plane.
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