Kubernetes on your Raspberry Pi homelab ebook

There's a saying about the cloud, and it goes something like this: the cloud is just somebody else's computer. While the cloud is actually more complex than that (it's *a lot* of computers), there's a lot of truth to the sentiment. When you move to the cloud, you're moving data and services and computing power to an entity you don't own or fully control, which on one hand frees you up from having to perform administrative tasks you don't want to do, but on the other hand could mean that you no longer control your own computer. This is why the open source world likes to talk about an *open hybrid cloud*, a model allowing you to choose your own infrastructure, choose your own OS, and orchestrate your workloads as you see fit. However, if you don't happen to have an open hybrid cloud available to you, then you can create your own open private cloud to help you learn how the cloud works, or to serve your local network.

Building your own cloud requires at least 3 Raspberry Pi units, an ARM Linux distribution to serve as an OS, and Kubernetes to help you manage the containers your cloud will eventually run. Chris Collins explains every step you need to take to make this happen in our new [free ebook](DOWNLOAD LINK), and if you've ever built an array of distributed computing nodes before, you'll probably be surprised at how simple it is. Sooner than you expect, you'll reach the end the installation, and you'll inevitably be faced with this question:

Now what?

What's the real-world application of a private cloud running on tiny computers in your office? What do you need Kubernetes for, any way? I used to ask myself the same questions, and I've came up with enough answers to at least justify a minor investment in a spare Raspberry Pi or two, and the time it takes to follow through with Chris's ebook instructions. Here are some ideas for you.

Network attached storage for your home

If you're a hobbyist just looking to try out the latest tech, then one of the easiest entry points is the improvement of your own network. Ever since the Raspberry Pi was released, I've never been without a home server, even during the times that my home was just a rented room in the suburbs. My home networks weren't always very complex, but they ran a few services that I enjoyed having available, and so it suited me.

Following along with Chris's ebook, though, I've recently added Kubernetes and a few nodes to my network, and now I have the ability to add any number of services. I've finally got NFS running so me and my partner can access shared files as if they existed locally on whatever computer we're each using. We have an easy backup plan based on NFS. I also have the open source

Kodi media server

running so we can watch movies, listen to music, and view photos (all stored on the NFS share) from anywhere in the house. An install of

Nextcloud

makes collaboration easy, and it also helps us keep in touch with family members in other countries, without resorting to the likes of Facebook. In short, Kubernetese and the many container images available for easy installs, has transformed my local network into my own personal Internet or supercomputer. It doesn't provide all services for all people, but it provides exactly the services I want to the people who I want to have access.

If you're duplicating media or applications across several devices, or if you're building a home server, then you should consider a Kubernetes cluster. It's easy to scale for power and storage, it's easy to maintain, and it's a lot of fun.

Education and upskill

Are you considering a career in IT? Are you already in IT but you want to continue growing as a professional? The cloud is a powerful model, and kubernetes is an easy way to wrangle a lot of potential power. The more you learn about these concepts, the better prepared you'll be to move up in your career.

One of the most frustrating aspects of the cloud in its early days was its inaccessibility. If you didn't own racks of servers, it was difficult to gain experience administering and maintaining a cloud infrastructure. Thanks to the open source projects like

, building your own cloud has become possible. Thanks to the Raspberry Pi and other ARM-based system-on-a-chip (SoC) computers, it's also affordable.

Web server

One of the easiest entry points into modern technology is the Internet. Since the 90s, regular folk have wandered into the strange world of computing just by reading HTML in a desperate attempt to understand how to put an animated GIF onto a Myspace or Geocities page. A natural progression from rudimentary HTML and CSS is to run a web server. Admittedly, a Kubernetes cluster is probably overkill for a personal site, but it's a great project to become familiar with how Kubernetes pods work and why they're important. It's a great way to learn about

routing

and load balancing.

Containers

Linux containers have changed IT, and computing as a whole. The original

LXC

toolset enabled and inspired hugely popular technologies like Docker, Flatpak, Kubernetes, Podman, and more. Containerization is a new model of running code, showing up on operating systems for desktops and mobiles.

The problem is, containers are *different* than what most users are accustomed to. Traditionally, binaries were compiled according to the OS, they were linked to locally available libraries, and they generally had access to everything on the hard drive.

Containers are different

. They're miniature runtime environments, and binaries run within them, linked to other libraries in the container, and it's all kept separate from the host system unless granted a specific exemption. Furthermore, a container is ephemeral. You can create a container and dispose of it arbitrarily. Running a service in a container is a great way to learn how data can possibly be persistent in an environment designed to end and respawn at any moment.

As painful as that learning curve can be, the discovery of how easy containerized apps can be to install opens a whole new world of possibilities to you. You can run the

Grafana

dashboard, the

Prometheus

monitoring software, Discourse, Nextcloud, and a dozen others, from prebuilt container definitions or

Helm charts

Web development

If you're a developer delivering apps for the web,

Kubernetes offers many benefits

. It can transform your workflow, and most importantly it can help make your apps resilient. When you're developing for the cloud, you leverage

the best principles of microservices

in the context of containers, and you're able to use the advantages of distributed computing, file systems, and databases.

Try Kubernetes yourself

If you've learned

the basics

of Kubernetes, now's the time to take your knowledge further with your very own private cloud. Download our [free ebook](DOWNLOAD LINK) and start using Kubernetes today. You never know where it will take you.